CAESAR’S LAST BREATH
by MICHAEL SALCMAN
Caesar’s Last Breath
—Enrico Fermi (1901-1954)
On the Ides of March, great Caesar stabbed to death
by friends, expelled his final breath
in exclamation, an accusation I’m forced to share
by Fermi’s calculation each time I respire in joy or despair
an atom of the cry my Mother gave in giving me birth
or later, my Father’s shout at exchanging the earth
beneath our feet, from blooded Old World to New.
What holds the star-winged atoms of our bones but the glue
of universal speech, the pneuma of life?
Each day exchanges the oxygen of kings with child and wife,
the lips of long gone fiends exclaim with those in doubt
or pray in unison with the most devout.
Less a calculus of breath than perverted fate
how often we exhale love and fill our lungs with hate.
End of the poem
15 random poems
- create.html
- The Little Worold by William Barnes
- Time To Transplant by Nijole Miliauskaite
- The Harvest Moon by Ted Hughes
- Passion Of My Heart by Stevens Cadet
- The Broomfield Hill poem – Andrew Lang poems
- The Ravaged Face by Sylvia Plath
- A Song Of The Future. by Sidney Lanier
- A Song by Thomas Carew
- Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney
- Last Curtain by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Death of Knowledge by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
- This Compost. by Walt Whitman
- Омар Хайям – Красой затмила ты Китая дочерей
- Низами Гянджеви – В привычке сердца воровать ты
Some external links:
Duckduckgo.com – the alternative in the US
Quant.com – a search engine from France, and also an alternative, at least for Europe
Yandex – the Russian search engine (it’s probably the best search engine for image searches).
