Not for Conquering to Crush and Make a Cruel Empire but for Unforgotten Beauty
“Hystaspes had a younger brother whose name was Zariadres: and they were both men of great personal beauty” ~ Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, XIII, 919
So what if you exist in words alone
In some freak journal from the ancient past,
A pampered book that almost makes us groan
With pedantry gone mad, deep in the vast
Egyptian desert? What if that is all
Remaining of a man two thousand years
Now lost except for those few lines, a crawl
Of syllables across a scroll? Your fears—
Oblivion, blank annihilation,
An emptiness so full that you might not
Have ever been, an evaporation
So total that you might have been just naught—
Are dead, for still you are what most can’t be,
Embalmed with lovely masculinity.