Drawing by Susan C. Price
Livia
By Eric Meub
Livia
By Eric Meub
[Originally published on October 8, 2016]
My Lares are Lorazepam and guilt,
my Cicero is Amy Vanderbilt,
but there’s no Seneca to set me free
from Greco-Roman grandiosity.
The vestal glazes virgins in the worn
and vacant virtues better vessels scorn;
the temple shields beneath its Roman eaves
the god in whom no Roman still believes.
I crave the greedy daring-do of Greece
(until it falls on me to play police),
and wonder how my Mycenaean climb
descended to a Roman end-of-time.
I ask my husband would it not be best
to split domestic empire east from west?
Decline is dull, but Fall is action-packed:
the Better Homes & Gardens end up sacked.
| Copyright © 2018 by Susan C. Price & Eric Meub Eric Meub, architect, lives and practices in Pasadena, the adopted brother of the artist, Susan C. Price. They respect, in their different ways, the line. |
Let’s get off on the right foot interpreting this poem. From Wikipedia: “Lares were guardian deities in ancient Roman religion. Their origin is uncertain; they may have been hero-ancestors, guardians of the hearth, fields, boundaries, or fruitfulness, or an amalgamation of these. Lares were believed to observe, protect and influence all that happened within the boundaries of their location or function.”
ReplyDeleteI love the poem! Bravo.
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