Charlotte Hughes

The Classics

At dusk the earthworms came back
To survey the sidewalk carnage

And you slouched in your favorite chair
To read a play, Julius Caesar,

So old the pages had passed yellow
And browned.

Long ago I read that the modern person
Couldn’t survive a day in ancient Rome

No matter the number of neat mottoes.
Semper fi, love.

They say modernity is soft
But I still think it is a feat

That we have lived. Rose hips,
Anise, pomegranate, pistachio,

You sifted through the figs and lemons
In the fruit basket, fingers sinking

Into the spotted bruises, and chose
A single blue plum, overripe, gratuitous.

The Romans had few words for colors.
Little use for description

Except in killing. They wouldn’t say blue,
Red, brown, but perhaps natural,

Like something growing in a place it should.
I hope we have done right

And still what does it mean to thrive
In a place of violence?

At last the sun was struck down.
The plum gone and book shut.

Talk, too physical
And rigorous. Just offstage,

Two crimson shadows
Behind the gold curtain.