Tuesday Poem: "Fall of the Empire"

Caesar bows his wine-stained head

to the will of the people.

He remembers the day he crossed the Volga,

his cult of personality so powerful

that the Senate acquiesced

and made him Emperor.

But now his bullish demeanour has given way

to a tired uncertainty.

He failed to heed his loyal lieutenant's warning:

“Beware the Ides of August.”

Though sworn to uphold perestroika,

the Praetorian Guard rose in mutiny,

but were swept aside by citizens

tired of circuses without the bread.

Its idealism soured,

the Empire disintegrates like a rotten fruit

as Caesar gasps: “Et tu, Boris.”

POET'S NOTE: This poem was written in the post-euphoric state ushered in by Mikhail Gorbachev when the totalitarian state gave way to a more liberated way of life for the Soviet Bloc. Sadly, the pure ideals of Marx's vision of Communism were never realised and Orwell's vision became the truth. Then Gorbachev softened the hardline and people had to accept the failed and flawed version of Capitalism. Only Jesus could encapsulate the true and pure form of Communism. Us fatally flawed, egotistical, hierarchy-obsessed human beings could never realise the purity of a True Communism. More is the pity.