Lament of Charmian

In Rome my mistress was mistook

And never a harlot was.  Married

               to Caesar, what cared we that he

            had a wife in his foreign

       barbarous land, a ritual we did not know,

Great Isis blessed us here.

Then Caesar died, and Antony came,

My lady was not beautiful,

From an Alexandrine line

               The nose too figured.

              And much too fair.  But my papers,

               my curls, made her--

Blackened, braided, lacquered

          Golds, purples . . . ah my craft

--what she was

               fit for Queendom.  She ruled, but

so did I. . . . We died together

              by that good omen.

       The work of twenty dynasties to bring her

               to that perfection.

               And together we

Made a story for all time.

Myreen Nicholson                   2005

published in The Poet's Domain, vol 22

Live Wire Press, Charlottesville, VA