Don’t ask me how it happened.
Something to do with the sulfur
in the baths or the strange plants
the locals had been eating.
What matters is that the next thing
the Centurion knew, he’d woken up
in an entirely unfamiliar land.
The air smelled like a smoldering foundry
or the sulfur pits of Sicily.
It sounded like a thousand smiths
had brought their work to watch
while some strange war was waged.
The chariots were covered in glass
and jewels and flew by without horses.
Somehow he knew he wasn't dreaming.
He had a terrible headache.
He couldn't remember why.
He looked around at the chaos
and confusion, the strangers
dressed in the strangest clothes,
and found two reasons to hope.
The first was the writing: he knew
those letters, even if he couldn’t read.
The second adorned the jewelry he saw
and the tops of the strangers’ monuments:
as long as they so prominently displayed
the crosses on which criminals were slowly killed
he could not have strayed all that far
from the heartland of Roman law.
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