For Mark, of the Colosseum

by Mitch Manning

Ajax cried ‘kill me in the light’
and they say you did too,
riding your stallion to the sea

All is blood and fire
in the unfolding prophecy
of fate’s resounding horn 

Lives precede what inscribes them,
like the sun-stained, dark ocean
of late August twilight

Speak like silence,
you who carried your sleeping sword
an amulet against your warrior chest

All battles waged within you
armored against the light
you tried to grasp until the end

Perdurabo, no weak heart shall enter,
stay open to that tenderness you wrapped
like ivy around your war-stained arms

Love is a fire that burns in the breast
of all who know the closing aperture
of the setting sun

Live long brother, storm across the sea

Mitch Manning

Mitch Manning is the author of city of water (Arrowsmith, 2019). He’s taught poetry in central China and his poems have been read in Basra, southern Iraq as part of the Boston to Basra Project. He teaches in the English and Labor Studies programs at UMass Boston. Work published in The Doris, BOOG City, Let The Bucket Down, CONSEQUENCE, Sundial, Hollow, GAFF and elsewhere.