Brothers from a Mediterranean Mother

Postcard From A Greek Vacation

Sing to me Muse, of that warrior from Rome

Who won the whole world and carried it home

From conquered Greece he left no stone unturned

Looting the trophies his victory earned.

He took Venus and Plato and mosaic floors

And brought it all back to Tiber’s rough shores

Till all Italy was but a Trojan Horse

Greek ideals wrapped up in Roman force

Where Caesar wore laurels like Emperor’s clothes

While on Corinthian columns a Pantheon rose

So though they’d been vanquished the Greeks lived on

Through Ages dark and Enlightened dawns.

What trick of the gods, the old soldier wondered

Allowed Greece to rise up from the ruins he’d plundered

It haunted his days of la dolce vita

Till he found his thoughts turning from pizza to pita

One more voyage he vowed though likely his last

He would sail to fair Greece to atone for the past.

At the Acropolis he climbed to Athena’s great gate

Where the goddess was waiting to pronounce his fate:

“The damage you’ve done I’m prepared to forgive

For when you stole our inventions you caused them to live.”

Such joy felt our hero at Fortune’s sweet flip

That when he returned to his wave-worn ship

He vowed that Greco and Roman should forever be wed

Then he pulled down his sail and made it into a bed

On the edge of the world forever here he would lie

On wind-washed stones beneath a sea-blue sky.