Mosaic | Mambo | The Silent Din | Love's Song

Flor de la Canela (The Cinnamon Flower)

All the Roses | In the Dark | Night Tremens

Mosaic

© Carl Hathwell

Then Antony laid down his arms
and said, "It's time to die.
I feel it like a stone inside.
Yes, it's time to die."

He had played the game,
fearlessly, recklessly,
until the game broke loose
and brought him to his end.

A dank wind racked his limbs.
So the game had rules,
not his own. Whose, then?
Despair chilled him like an ague.

The world froze.
Palms stood still,
Black sun rays veiled his sight,
all fracturing in a mute mosaic.

An eroding, sand-swept mosaic.
Should I have spared Cicero?  Brutus?
Would they be with me now?
Once, he remembered, he had friends, a home.

Only one bosom would have him now.
The bosom that lifted him to the heights
would ease him to his death.
He knew she would wait.

Flurries of windy dust tracked him, mocking.
The world already saw him as dead.
He fixed a mosaic in his mind,
only one image in his mind: