The Master Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Bare naked,
My family ran screaming
From the woods and
Tore down Rome.
My sister
Killed the Emperor
With her own hands,
Laughing.
Shortened by a head,
We shared from his skull
Imbibing the stolen fruits
As Beowulf and Brecca,
My good friends,
Torched the fields.
Then I did not know
Who kept History:
Italians have always been
About the Big Show,
But the day was ours,
No matter how the
School books read.
In the chaos on the streets
I found her,
The woman without a name.
Years of incest had
Made her beautiful but weak.
She said she loved me,
But those were the only words
She knew.
I took her North with me all the same,
And built her a home
By the stream that flows
Down from the gods’ plateau.
I was good to her,
But she was a slave and could
Not change.
She said she loved me,
But those were just utterances
From her lips,
And not understanding why I
Didn’t shave nor wear metals
From the earth,
To signify myself,
After a few years she sailed away:
She went with the last wave
Of New Immigrants to America
Long after my ancestors had cleared those fields
From her window
High away in the city
She decried them and blasphemed my name:
A slave,
She once said she loved me,
But those were the words
She could not understand.
Homeless, but too busy to care,
I pioneered the Earth
Nameless to the Big Show,
But, all the same, doing it all,
Unwritten, a griot’s son,
The master.