A coin minted before his death
Shows Julius Caesar
Bald and wrinkled,
Bignosed and scraggynecked.
Post-mortem, the profile
Is noble, handsome and smooth.
Who does not love a Roman fiction?
History is kidnapped by pirates,
For strange things happen at sea.
Sicary with the stylus,
The demi-god dictates fables
And lessons from his skin.
Emperor of images,
The visage melts and changes,
Renaissance fresco, Fascist bust.
Conqueror of minds,
Christ and Antichrist,
Romance of violence becomes you.
Twenty-three wounds,
The body in question lies rendered
At Pompey’s marble feet.
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