Caesar's Death

He came forward and they were there,

Waiting,

Friends, Romans, Countrymen.

You remember.

Hidden among them

Were those eager for something forbidden.

First, speeches condemning civic disorders:

Illegal assemblies,

Inflammatory books in schools,

Bombings of churches.

Most voted in anger, unrepentant.

Then came the sacrifice.

The killers decorated his body with the scarlet rags

They used to wipe their blades.

 

They all confessed to the crime

To avoid punishment.

It worked.

Yellow clouds at sunset made their faces golden.

Caesar was no longer Caesar

But Caesar.

 

For a few months no citizen was molested.

The cocks crowed on schedule.

Then began the work

Of reconciling ignorance of the facts

With the omens some began to discover.

Little things at first,

Gardens overrun by Japanese beetles

Or a dead cat in the driveway.

But soon farmers were reporting calves with two heads

Or none born at all

To cows grown suddenly sterile.

In some counties it was said the sun moved backward.

Observers sewed their eyes shut in shock

And cancelled their internet and cable.

 

Later, these reports were exposed as hoaxes.

The bombings of churches increased, however,

Spread to playgrounds.

 

Everyone prayed for peace but ballads of love

Spoke only of war.

And what about the war?

It went on forever,

So long people forgot it was a war

And started calling it something else,

Police action, Containment, Operation with a capital O.

Television.

Congressional investigations followed

And that, finally, was the end.

Everybody stopped listening.

 

Caesar’s name was banned for a while

But eventually resurfaced on community rec centers,

T-shirts, and a popular brand of ice cream.

A statue in the capitol was planned

But remained unfinished for many years,

Held up by litigation.

And then there were the movies.

They distorted everything

But pulled in droves

Because the sex scenes were usually pretty good.

 

Not a single one of them depicted

The bombing of churches or playgrounds, though.

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