1

At the gladiator pits of the Coliseum

I did not remember Luna

And the restored Spoliarium did not yet hang

At the National Museum.

 

That was a long time ago

And Rome is a vague memory, a two-day

Layover on the way home

From Florence, to exit from Leonardo da Vinci.

 

But history older than us

Does not fade easily. It hangs in the memory

Like a picture not our own,

A souvenir from someone else’s travels.

 

2

In Luna’s Spoliarium, for instance,

With its grand manner of depicting carcasses

Of gladiator slaves being dragged past

Libitina’s threshold, to be despoiled of their

Armor—reminding us that they failed

In the entertainment of the Roman

Emperor and his mob—

 

What unappealing but refined déjà vu

Or hint of their own decline 

Did the Spanish detect that they gave him

One of three golds of the Exposición Nacionál?

Who was this Indio who could so remind them

Of themselves, in the drama of Delacroix 

And the chiaroscuro of Rembrandt?

 

But it was not the Spoliarium gave him 

Top honors. It was, simply, the popular 

Choice. At the instance of the King 

The guilty Spanish Senate commissioned 

The Battle of Lepanto, which one year later

Gave Luna the actual Medal of Excellence. 

 

And they hang The Battle in glory

At the Senate Hall in Madrid. (Now his 

Other obra, The Death of Cleopatra, 

Not as grand in scale but as theatrical 

In pose, almost facile and poster-like 

In today’s standards, hangs at the Prado.)

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