Valens’ Dreams at Adrianople
What is the nature of Rome? Place or culture?
Would the sun set on this city as change
occurs, never noticed but by the vultures
of history? My Eastern city strange!
Christ’s nature is up for debate so preached
Nicomedia and Lucian, priests
Of controversial doctrines. Men sing each
to their own faith, aware of tales from beasts.
These Balkan landscapes, host to centuries
of war, do bleed our conscience. What dull dreams
were killed on the fields of Edirne? Pleas
delineate Byzantine-born sense and schemes.
Speak, last true Roman, though no Roman son,
the horse becomes the tank, the sword the gun.
-published in The Lyric