The Sabine Women

Some fictions live

in history books:

who dare remove

“a fine illustration

of the character

of early Rome,” whether or not 

rapacious bachelors 

really put on

a show (the play’s

the thing) to dazzle

parents [howling

cheers through wine-

stained lips under Apollo’s

(O, god of truth, how

does your) light (not reveal

the treachery of cunning

men?) to singers,

dancers (offered a bride

to perform this day, or

just too amused by the game

not to play?)] from several

Italian states, and “en-

rapture” their virgin

daughters like a god-hand?

And young ladies raped

had little hope but marriage

to the rapist (Deuteronomy

22:28 agrees, and adds

a bride price to the bargain),

or a shame-dodging suicide.

(Lucretia was not happy.)

Girls of eleven bought

their lives by plotting words  

of love: self-preservation

wrapped in nobility,

rationalizations beyond

their years; they would make

good Roman mothers. And they

would live [to wage the war

between vir and femina (the Vestal

buried alive in a crypt, Ovid,

exiled for carmin et error,

the priestess of the bona dea, armed

with venoms to abort children,

or marriages [house-bonds

are strong, but mortal, at end],

warriors all, and cells in a body

of war, ever absorbing

its enemies whole, and when

the great Marcus Antonius

allowed the reverse, when he let

a part of the body of Rome

be devoured, it was the most

unRoman thing he could do

[but back home, secretly,

the feminae approved])].

1. Apollo

2. War

3. History