128 AD

I come from the mud: with my cohort
up to my eyes in sublunary shite
I’ve razed forests, rerouted roads, remade them,
rebuilt the Imperial Border. The places I’ve seen,

pal! Soft as porridge, the soil there: drowning
in sludge, pigswill for tucker, your billet’s a
one-arsed village of mud slapped into bricks
and dried… Not that the sun ever shines there –

it hides its miserable face in a
slate-grey tantrum of mist and vicious,
pissing, remorseless rain, more than
you’d ever believe – but the crack was good

as well. Plenty of blonde, Batavian whores.
Who sound something between bleating or mooing
while you’re screwing them. As for their grasping,
hard-and-fast fingers, fair enough – I had the cash.

And then the crossing, worked on the wall,
the hand of a god who keeps us safe and warm.
The job done, I stayed on: I live in clover
here in the glow of this stone hand’s palm

that is reddening as I write. Casting shadows
in these grasslands on what look like
old hills, the clouds above are new, it’s
getting dark. I’m waiting for something.