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
- flight_of_stairs.html
- Аля Кудряшева – Не бойся, милый
- Владимир Британишский – Двуединство души
- Roads poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Ольга Седакова – Как упавшую руку
- Robert Burns: The Solemn League And Covenant:
- Cholera Camp by Rudyard Kipling
- No Regrets by Muralidharan Mudaliar
- Weird-Bird by Shel Silverstein
- Нина Воронель – Я не хочу опять вернуться в детство
- How Much Earth by Philip Levine
- A Poet039s Privilege
- Robert Burns: Deluded Swain, The Pleasure:
- Thoughts Mahomed Akram
- The Inventory by Robert Burns
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).
