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
- Ianthe by Walter Savage Landor
- Оливер Голдсмит – Эпитафия Неду Пардону
- Анатолий Жигулин – Дорога
- Robert Burns: Halloween: The following poem will, by many readers, be well enough understood; but for the sake of those who are unacquainted with the manners and traditions of the country where the scene is cast, notes are added to give some account of the principal charms and spells of that night, so big with prophecy to the peasantry in the west of Scotland. The passion of prying into futurity makes a striking part of the history of human nature in its rude state, in all ages and nations; and it may be some entertainment to a philosophic mind, if any such honour the author with a perusal, to see the remains of it among the more unenlightened in our own.-R.B.
- What Happened by Rudyard Kipling
- The Candle Indoors poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Олег Бундур – Август
- Epistles to Several Persons: Epistle IV, To Richard Boyle, poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster
- Statement of Being poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Epistle to Colonel de Peyster by Robert Burns
- Fairy Land ii by William Shakespeare
- The One Night Stand : An Approach to the Bridge by Paul Blackburn
- So Small, So Vital
- Forest by Walter William Safar
- Sitting atop the mountain hill by Swami Aaron Thomas
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).
