The Root of Doubt, or, How I Came to Commit Incest
A poem about Rome's Vestal Virgins
1: Yesterday
I.
There is a fire,
and like all fires,
It burns
Smoke and tar, dissolved spirits ascending
Into black clouds that hang as
Heavy laurels 'round our heads
We, the young
Plucked fresh from the threshold
Of our father's homes
And married to the state,
Bound to bear its children on our backs
But carry none within us, so help us gods
There is a fire in her hand,
A dog gnawing on the edge of a stick
Held high above her head
Dipped in the chimney of the gods
A hearth I groom as carefully as a horse
But with more wary hands
There is a burn, slightly darker than my skin
A remembrance of violence
That I touch as a talisman
When I feel stillness bordering on unsettling
When my toes grasp the edge of a void
When my mind wonders abyssally what if?
II.
Ten, and full of wonder if not years:
My father, Arcellus, calls us to him
Eyes like stars we wait, and await;
His eyes traverse our prepubescent bodies
In clinical assessment,
Probing for suitable perfection
Besides a small mole on the inside of my left thigh,
I am unblemished, if plain;
The others wilt as he nods in approval
I, the ignorant of what has just occurred
But the proud of being chosen.
Little do I know
It falls to me
To sit upon the mantle
Like polished silver
III.
At first glance the temple is airy,
Light despite marble construction
Living within it,
It becomes a cave,
Inhaling and exhaling us in time
With the flickering of the sacred flames
And still, freer than my eldest sister
With two boys and a man
To hold her tether;
We, the firekeepers,
Answer to a higher power
IV.
We take the state as our husband,
The Pontifex Maximus as our father;
In return become our own proprietors
To an extent;
Each gift is bound and gagged
With a threat,
A qualification of the holy life
Find yourself impure
And find yourself some courage
Because they're coming to bury you alive
What consolidation is the room they cut
Into the earth, the food and water,
When the sky above turns to loam?
We, the young never gave it much thought
All freshly turned soil was a garden,
And we'd eat the wildflowers that grew there
V.
We, the chosen:
Brides of the people
Blessed vessels of the goddess
I could never drink from the fount
Of passion; earthly or ethereal
The goddess but a face in stone
I would leave these vestments
To moths and the dust of time
To the shoulders of another woman
I would run naked as a nymph
Over the hills, and let the huntress try
And shoot me down in the moonlight
For all the freedoms I've been lent
And all the power I've taken
There's nothing of my face in it
In the firelight I touch my burn,
Look for the familiar throbbing of doubt:
Kastia, where have you gone?
VI.
Would that I could undo
Would that I could betray
Would that I could reprimand
Those inhuman watchers
Be joyous, Kastia;
Free as the goddess herself
But never free as the gods
She is the hearth, the mother
Who holds us aching to her breast
But never leaves the home
For fear the fire will die
Would that I could leave this home;
I was not born to serve but to flee the earth
From the depths to the heights
Born to leave litters in the road
And ash to be trodden to dust,
Untethered to a people or a flame
VII.
His eyes were a question
As they traced our stoic forms
As if searching for a crack;
I resisted the urge to drop an urn
And hear him startle at the crash
As the silence was pierced
Who has done and undone,
Who has left this empire open
To regression?
We stood shoulder to shoulder
Facing the faded flame,
Knowing it could still engulf us
Eyes like comets, he seethed
Under the hot, hot rays of righteous
Accusation
Whose impurity
Broke the sacred cycle
Of supplication and reward?
Who dared dance under
The tree of carnal pleasure,
Who took Hedonism to her bed?
Who concedes that they are damned?
VIII.
My purity outlasted my innocence,
But not by long;
I can remember berries bursting bloody on my tongue
As the trial commenced, Maximus presiding
Her eyes undone by crying;
Hands trembling in fear
There was a fire,
And once it burned;
Now it smokes in accusation
Aemilia and Tuccia could bend the world
Towards miraculous exoneration;
She had no such power
But still she said a prayer,
Quivering atop the stone floor,
Waiting for lightning to strike
And turning to stone
When none came
To save her
IX.
If I could retrace and reclaim
My stream of godly days
I might find the root of doubt
Gnarled and white, a wishbone
Begging to be split;
A wrist-bone guiding my hand
To write out sentences
That fall over themselves in confusion,
With words that burrow deep
Trying to find a needle, a vein,
A way to reconnect to what was lost
The day the lightning did not come
2: Now
II.
We are neighbors, he and I,
In an empire of suspicion;
His qualms and mine do merry dances
Around the temple, playing games,
Breeding beautiful, cynical offspring
His words are his hands, and they
Touch me so intimately I half
Expect to find bruises
Even a cut, or burn, to mark the sites
Of burgeoning radical leanings
To mark the hives of the what ifs
That buzz so boldly now
It's a mingling of souls,
Part per part, draining from us
In cathartic puddles
To form iron bars, anchoring light hearts
In a realm where the veil is thin
And every dance is a dirge
And the stage, a long-forgotten catacomb
Where sacrifice has failed to
Turn the air, or my soul, sweet
And in this dance, this dirge,
We sing an end to ourselves;
Banding together in leaden vacancy,
A silent, pointless revolution
III.
In the cycling of dreams
And the recycling of nightmares,
There is a time when nothing exists
Past the cover of night,
Where all that is real is candle-lit,
The sun simply a projection of will
And in this moment, the dance
Becomes as delicious as
Self destruction can be
I lay myself upon an alter
To myself, and he lays upon it
With me,
And together we make
Blasphemy
With our bare hands
IV.
My purity outlasts my innocence,
But not by long;
I can still taste him
Bursting bloody on my tongue
As the final notes of the dirge leave the air
A hollow sound fills us in its absence,
Strangely devoid of regret
It is nothing so simple as love
Or so lit as desire,
But a burn of communion
That chases away fog
V.
He and I,
And still the fire burns
Even by my tainted hands
The fire that mothers the others,
That heats all homes
And cooks all meat
And I think of those girls
In their earthen rooms
Entered of their own volition
I think of coercion
And ladders
Leading only down
And I think fire is
Extinguished more frequently by lack of wood
Than by divine intervention
So I keep the woodpile high
VI.
Dearest Vesta,
Can you hear the dirge?
Rising unbidden from our throats,
Born in our bellies and carried
Strongly up, to mountain heights;
Unafraid to wail with Olympic winds?
Can you feel the root of doubt,
Ascending to your home
To knock upon your door?
And if you can feel that white root
Coiling viperous around your neck,
Can you cut it out?
I tried to cling to you, beloved;
But my fingers were not warmed by your hearth
Your stone visage failed to fill me with wonder
Call me a traitor for standing
Impure upon your alter,
Courting divine fire;
But you didn't strike me down
When you had the chance
VII.
Call me what you will,
But do not blame me the next time
Our money turns to sand
Our patriarchs turn to infants
Our politicians turn to whores
Do not blame me the next time
The greats fall from their marble columns
And crack open like eggs upon the floor
My purity is no protection,
My wantonness nothing
But a monument to your own kind;
Lusty since the dawn of time
I'm nothing important enough
To fell an empire,
Even if an empire is felled by
A million minute things
Don't you dare blame me
When the lightning comes
Together, we did not beget wars,
Nor flood, famine, plague,
Wildfire, infertility, economic collapse;
We only beget a daughter
