Domitian's Black Room

by Brett Rutherford

Do you know who I am?
Do you know what this place is?
Bribe-takers, slave rapers, virgin-
abductors, temple defilers, daughter
seducers, wine adulterers, slum-
owning generators of a thousand
vices, some yet to be named!

I am Domitian, your Emperor!
Kneel and abase yourselves.
Your God! (I see that all
but three are on their knees.

Look how they grovel!) A hug,
Martius, and Gemellus, and Titus.
You smile and stand, you get
the joke. What is this place?

In the rest come now,
two by two through the black
corridor to greet me,
now that my “temple oracle”
voice has died away.

Marus, I see you have soiled your toga!
Go off to the side there and get another.
What, Senator, no mirthful greeting?
(Just watch as all the old men’s
remaining teeth light up
as they invent forced grins, watch next
as their hands lift up the folds of robes
to ease the coming bows and curtseys.)

Down to your knees, I see,
as if to beg pardon, no doubt for all
that I have agreed to know, yet overlook.
Up! Up! Was the way well-lit?
Did torches fail to reflect
the black hues of jet and onyx?
Did you perspire to near fainting
as you passed the grates
through which you viewed
my room of sharpened axes?

Ha! I heard some count aloud
how many steps they descended
as you came down to reach me.

Your protests were noted
when your own guards
were replaced by my Praetorians.
Spotting a soldier he knew,
our friend Vitruvius offered
his tender bottom if only they’d let
him go back to his villa
afterwards. He’ll join us soon,
once ten Praetorians
have had their way with him.

Whatever bribes you gave
from your purses, those rings
and armlets, I’ll pile them up
and find some better use
than the adornment of reprobates.

Not in your life have any of you
been this far below the ground.
There are things down here
that even the Etruscans dread.

Did you hear the hard rush
of the Tiber waters,
the groan of the Cloaca Maxima
as you passed below the rat-filled deep?

I heard one say the word “Avernus.”
Every word echoes down to me  —
everything! I heard one mumbled
Nazarene prayer, but not who uttered it.
Dream on of Hell and Hades:
I am down here awaiting you.
You are the first to come
to the Black Room of Domitian.
I will summon others after you!
There are lists! There are lists!

Stop that wailing and murmuring now!
Ring that gong over there!
Again! They hear us! They stir!
The iron doors groan open
(a nice effect, I must say,
and look at some of them, fainting!)

Eheu, what is this place? Look up,
you sniveling millionaires
and Senators. It is dinner!
Ha! Ha!    Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

The Ravens Are Waiting, The Crows Have Arrived

by Brett Rutherford

1

Ravens are waiting. The crows have arrived.
Brown oaks darken with their spread wings, fanned tails.
Shrill calls from inside the chapel belfry
echo from the building fronts — a census
might count a thousand; how many make up
one "murder" is anyone's guess, but this,
at edge of college campus, counts as
a university already robed,
their corvine dissertations defended,
their gaudeamus anthems sunset-sung
as they spatter the bus-shelter's rooftops
and huddle all night in their unseen nests,
where they are nurturing tomorrow's crows
for their ancient calling. Ravens are waiting,
edged out, biding their time in ones and twos,
but they, too, are about their business,
hatching as many eggs as possible,
for they, afloat the white tide of Europe
onto this new continent, remember.

2

     Adapted from The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 937 CE

Here at Brunanburh, hosts
killed by King Athelstan,
lord of long-armed earls,
boon-giver of bracelets
to kneeling nobles,
killed he countless ones,
and with his brother also
Edmund, Elder, the aetheling —
how many killed? Too many
to count! Down the dead fell
as they destroyed the dread Scots
and burned their fair-sailed ships.
Loud the field resounded, bright
as gold the sweat on their armor!

Glad the sun rose, giving
light, the great star's morning
merry over the field of blood.
Dead soldiers lay, with lance
and dart struck down,
Norsemen prostrate
their brazen shields behind,
from arrows overshot.
Or Viking, or Scot,
or trait'rous Briton ally,
died they all dead
beneath the same bright sky!

Though some escaped,
Norsemen fleet in their nailed ships,
dragged off with our darts
inside them, sailed off
on the stormy sea
to fight a better day —
let them flee to Dublin,
sad city in Viking thrall!

But bellowing berserkers
they left behind.
Let them enjoy the crows,
and keening for their kind,
the dismal, starving kite
to entrail feast invite,
and let their last sight
be the black raven
with his horned beak
descending wide-winged.
And they, of armor stripped,
invite the white worm,
the voiceless toad,
the maggot-bearing fly.
By mid-day sun, the blood-
feast will draw the eagle,
and the greedy after-feast
of the falcon, battle-hawk.
At dusk, the gray beast comes.
Let but one live lamenting
the jaws of the wood-wolf.

Never in all the world's war
had there been a greater
slaughter, nor more destroyed
by the sharpened sword!

3

These are not bombs or arrows, yet.
Those who walk vertical are not yet
horizontal and motionless.
Not javelins, but hurled epithets,
anonymous death threats
are their weapons of choice.

Passive, unvaccinated idiots,
four to a pram, wheel to the park,
pushed by unlettered parents
whose only book celebrates
eyes plucked for eyes unopened.

The earth beneath them weeps,
the methane-pocketed soil shrugs,
Swiss-cheese sink-holed hollowed:
whose house will it swallow next?

The water, oil-slicked, rills bright
in rainbow glitterings, but no one
minds. The bees, too weak to pollinate
the trees, can only buzz protest.
The shrinking bird host
has no elected legislators.

The armies are everywhere.
More bullets in stock than ever
babies can be made. One with
your name on it awaits you!
Just one emergency more,
and troops tip-toe
across this border, that
river declared as mine
and not yours, the oil there
for the taking, loot's prime
directive! A subtle lead-up,
dueling conspiracies of complicit
foreigners, expert at poisoning
from village well to townhouse
door-knob, gas-death for all,
warehouses are ready, germs known
and unknown pocketed
for easy distribution. War-mongers
worse than war-hawks, with
mercenary wink, a profit
pocketed, the rich secured
in their walled manors —
oh, they are almost ready!

Led by a drooling madman,
and weasel sniveling, a nation rots.
No need for foreign enemies
when enemies of the people
are among us already. Take arms!
The National Guard will help.
Your local police are militarized
and know who the secret Muslims are!

Park and field, tent city
and commandeered stadium,
vast open spaces sky-spread
await the arrival of carrion.
The ground will groan
with the bodies of the dead.
Serves them right: journalists
the scum of Karl Marx, the host
of homeless what business theirs
to clog our cities, those bearded
zealots with their hairy Protocols,
off with you, o everything but white!

Athelstan's heirs, they cannot wait
for this. They were born to see
this thing through at last.
Sheets off, gentlemen, it's
Armageddon among us.

Ravens are waiting.
The crows have arrived.

The Developer

by Brett Rutherford

     After the 11^th-century Anglo-Saxon

Even before your birth
a home was built for you.
Your sculptured form was carved
to adorn its courtyard
even before your mother bore you.
We have planned for everything:
how many floors, how deep the lot
(these things are not determined
until I bring you to it.
Imagine not having to worry
about room enough for all
those honors and possessions!)

Here, in this vestibule remain
until I measure you
and the matching sod of earth.
The ceiling is too low, you say?
It is not highly built.
"Unhigh" or "low" are just two ways
to look at today's economies
of scale and space.
Too low to stand, I see,
too narrow for arm-swing.

I am here for you. See here:
the roof is built just up
to the breast's proud swell,
and no further. Horizontal?
A matter of perspective,
of marketing and branding.

In fact, we have already arrived.
I wanted to surprise you. Right here
you shall dwell full cold,
in dimness and darkness,
hearth-black, a cauldron cold
with, shall we say honestly,
an air of putrefaction.

Your new house needs no door
(a flat stone, a quaint barrow
of piled rocks for that pagan look),
nor is is lit within. Go in,
and feel yourself detained
in windowless darkness. Never
again will you need a house-key,
no phone, no lamp, no keeping out
your new neighbors, the creeping
and crawling things who just cannot
wait to make your acquaintance.
The worms come round
for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

You have no need of friends.
They will not come anyway,
not after the feasting, songs,
and fights over your belongings —
save for that one who digs,
opens the earth-top remembering
your strong arms, your kisses,
or, more likely, that golden finger-
ring they did not dare remove,

and seeing you at home this way,
he shall sicken and drop
the midnight shovel, for you
shall have become loathsome,
even to the sun and stars.

I take no fee for this.
Death am I, and I have done my due.

Icelandic Justice

by Brett Rutherford

     Adapted from the Old Norse

And he of you, one or the other
that shall rail against the settlement
of a dispute, or deny atonement made,
or break an oath he was bidden to swear:

Hunt him we shall, as we hunt the wolf,
to the far hills and the icy crevasse,
even to the mouth of Hel, wherever wolf
would flee, him we shall follow,
to the earth's last Christian church we hunt him,
even in the heathen place of offerings
we shall hunt and find him;

we shall seek him as far as fire burns,
to the last meadow where earth-grass greens,
to any place where sons their mother summon
to hearth-side, to the last mother's bearing
of the last son of her line we seek him,

at any place where any wanderer
kindles his lonely fire, we find him out,
to any sea that ships sail, to any isle
where the fugitive' shield shines
in a foreigner's battles, we know
his name and by his name we find him.

Can he find a place where no sun shines,
where no snow settles white on hillocks,
where waters lie flat with no fish-fin upon it,
where there is no shade or shard of fir
to give him shelter or kind kindling.

Oh, let him fly with a fair wind behind him.
Let him have winds of fame in his new-found name.
We shall find him out, as sure as sky turns,
as sure as thee earth lets us walk upon it
and not sink down to quicksand, as sure as wind
blows sails, and waters went to the sea,

as long as one mean churl casts seed
into the earth at ice-break,

as long as there is bread to eat and mead
to comfort our long-arm quest,
he shall not evade the Law!