Rome Grew Ready: Sacred Poetry
by Cosmic Poet Simon Pole
Trans Solar World Battery image by Joe Haput CC BY-SA
Rome Grew Ready
Rome grew ready for the Lord,
With the book, and with the sword,
Lips that read, and arms that hew,
To surround the eastern Jew.
Client states, and client kings,
Laws and lawyers, speeches ring
In the courts and in the square,
Where dispute Apollo’s heirs.
Tribes and tribute, many won,
From the rise to set of sun,
Peoples scattered all subdued,
Into its mosaic glued.
Any rube from Spain or Gaul,
Covered in an ox-hide caul,
Could in camp or palace rise,
By the people undespised.
On the roads his letters sent,
Stage by stage the horses spent,
Which the breadth of Rome traverse,
Bearing praises, or its curse.
So the Romans, so the state,
When a star, declaring fate,
At an inn burnt overhead,
And straw was the infant’s bed.
Judea’s king, not the first,
Water for the prophets’ thirst,
But not as they wanted him,
With a sword and fighting trim.
Yet the Romans saw him thus,
Rousing rabble, causing fuss
With the pilgrim and the priest,
Mocking worthies at the feast.
Their Republic long was lost,
Liberty on ash-dump tossed;
Yet still they hate foreign kings,
Rebels doubly, who strife bring.
Thus our future and its foil:
The spring of fate subtlety coiled
Around events, sudden tripped
When the cup came to be sipped.
A king they raised on a tree,
Though they meant it mockery,
And a label to excuse
Guiltless blood which them accused.
But some days hence, on the roads,
Which broadcast the Roman code,
Happy trampers with their crooks
Bore letters of God’s great book.
To many ports spread the Word,
That from Cephas they had heard,
John and James, the zealot too,
Who as Saul the Lord’s friends slew.
To the hopeless came the Way,
A kingdom where ever day
Its bright beams drips on the dark,
Which has captured mankind’s heart.
In Spain, in Gaul, Rome itself,
Coastal enclave, mountain shelf,
Where once reigned wide Caesar’s will,
New laws rule from Seven Hills.
Many peoples all submerged,
In an empire, so were purged
Of their idols, purple-cloaked,
Princeps who self-worship stoked.
Old Rome again had a king,
And its temples praises sing
Not to Caesar, or stone heads,
But to he raised from the dead.
Tiny was the mustard seed,
Fed with wounds which martyrs bleed:
A greater realm never known,
Yet by Jesus overthrown.
From the Like a Lamb collection.