Blighter Rome

Desert air on skin
The chill of empty space
The nomad's grin
The sand, the wave and the cold
Will drive him back in
Will keep them close to him

And they will hide inside
Behind blind mirrors
Trembling in tents
Hearts weak with fear
He knows
He likes to keep them near

And at the night
With a pride too big to swallow
And with leprous hands
Has them hum and dance to him

For they have boiled his faith
Into abstraction
And coiled up in their sickrooms
Their bodies stir-stir-stirring in blankets

Like a mother's withered breasts
They still set him to dreaming
Of quartering steel and of climbing fire