Before the Roman dogs break down these doors,
let’s talk woman to woman, queen.
Though you lie there on the bed
and see no one.
No one but your soldier—transformed
into a god, perhaps.
I laughed the day you set out to greet Marc Antony
over the waters,
in your golden barge with the purple sails and silver oars.
So perfumed, they said the winds were
lovesick.
Now you lie on silk sheets in your own monument.
The perfect tableau, once again. Your body,
cold as a slab of marble, is beautiful
as it was before. I see the asp's fresh bite flush
on your left breast, like a lover’s kiss in the night.
Even in death, you know how to wet
men’s appetites.
Tomorrow, you will be buried next to your Antony.
And Caesar will remark: No grave on earth shall hold
a love so destructive
it took the world’s history as its stage, and then
the heavens, too.
What is death compared to
slavery. Shall I be a puppet paraded on the streets
for the enemy to stare and paw at?
(Even sweet Iras—look how she sleeps—
said she’d rather claw her eyes out with her nails
than witness such a spectacle.)
No, I will play my part in your script, Cleopatra.
But when I take the poisonous asp
no one will say:
There lies poor Charmian who loved once,
and was beloved. Who could have married a young farmer
and settled by the Nile. Bore him children. Two strong boys,
running like the wind and turning golden in the sunlight.
Who will leave nothing behind now, not even
her shadow, for her love was not worth
a tragedy.
In the final act, the maidservant might as well
be furniture.
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