Byzantium
Nicknamed bearkeeper,
keeper of wild things
for amphitheatre games, the father died;
the widow lost the living
of beasts, when crony bribes
shifted office to another;
she looked to her girls
for bread,
to the daughter Theodora;
and so the neat tricks turned,
rye grain salted in her crotch,
her Leda and the Swan a hit;
then civil war, old empires
overwhelmed, no entertainments,
no public lights in any city;
the rebel Justinian,
his hair cut differently from Romans,
with a beard as Persians do;
clipping the hair
short to the temples, in great length
and disorder in the back;
took a wife,
the most depraved of all courtesans,
together ripped the city’s roots;
other histories reporting her conversion;
dying of cancer, gave fugitives sanctuary
in the women’s quarters.
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