This photo of a colossal door built by Emperor Hadrian at the Pantheon reminded me of Hadrian's never-ending passion for his dead boyfriend Antinous. So I wrote this new poem about meeting Hadrian's ghost at that giant door.
HADRIAN’S DOOR
by Brett Rutherford
“The oldest door still in use in Rome, Pantheon. Cast in bronze for emperor Hadrian's rebuilding, they date from about 115 AD. Each door is solid bronze seven and a half feet wide & twenty-five feet high, yet so well balanced they can be pushed or pulled open easily by one person.” -- History Addicts
At the Pantheon’s
colossal door,
Hadrian’s ghost pushes.
The shade of Antinous
pulls. A child could move
the hinges, bronze on bronze,
yet ghosts fail even
to raise a single quill
from a single fallen dove.
Here in the Pantheon,
doomed love
of Emperor for favorite
raises no sweat
on a statue’s brow,
just as no creak
of hinge, no slit
of dark to light admits
a passage between
the immortal beloved
and the grieving lover.
What passed through here
at Empire’s height?
Gods of marble, plunder
from barbarian cities,
high banners waving,
the tented float
bearing a captive queen,
triumphs brought in
on the backs of elephants?
Now the world’s largest door
swings in, swings out
for the merest tourist,
one line of force here,
one movement there,
a victory of vectors.
I summon you,
great Caesar’s ghost:
lean your tired arm
upon my shoulder.
Pass through with me—
I push — it yields —
ajar it is,
just wide enough
for the two of us.
Who would not wait
two thousand years
for a passage through
to the azure gaze
of Antinous – Oh!
See him there,
among the crowd:
among the crowd:
that silhouette!
None other!
