Dramatis Personae
I could tell you
but I’d have to kill you:
*
A wall rose around Rome
to mark the beginning
of the end.
A woman rages
against a history
she can’t touch.
*
Then a figure appears
unannounced. He
speaks; I fall
into his mind. He comes
looking for me
when he should be at home.
*
X, my lover, makes me
a Roman woman.
We are flawlessly quiet.
You know what happens now.
Travelogue
I faint
in flight and fall and fall. I come to
a hill above the city.
There’s Rome, at a nice
remove—seems like
itself from here. Each day, retrieve
book from shelf. Out
the windows, in the pages
figures of
a wall that might
as well be mine. Aureliana
suits me; each gate opening
new ways
not to arrive.
Didactic of a Column with Helical Frieze1
I.
A triumphal column serves no architectural function. It is pure desire. It marks. Extends opposite. Stretches its core. Awes the eye. With the invention of the helical frieze, the column makes a body dizzy. Circling the base, the body absorbs detail. Circling the base, the eye cannot hope to read the figures at the top. Yet they are beautifully completed, for whom?
II.
to demonstrate / to declare / to show / to make visible
what has been cut
down
thus making the Forum level
III.
AD DECLARANDVM QVANTAE ALTITVDINIS
MONS ET LOCVS TANTIS OPERIBVS SIT EGESTVS
IV.
What Rome is. Not what it means, what it is. If I could see what it is, I could begin to describe my desire
to level it / the playing field / to learn all there is
to know / to be consumed
and consummated / in block letters
in stone / to go there / to come
V.
The frieze wraps its legs around the column. No need to describe every maneuver, but one must gather them unto a monument. I put the scenes side by side; they duly entwine. The woman sweating in the Roman sun, dreaming of a man’s voice—she doesn’t need to be shown. Just show a man addressing his troops, soldiers in testudo with shields raised overhead. The enemy dead under a tree. The woman’s hand is on the pen, trying to describe something. The woman’s hand is where a column would be, trying to level the playing field.
VI.
how high a hill and place
the height and location of the hill
how much in elevation the hill and the site
the height which this hill and place attained
VII.
Impossible to build on uneven territory. Necessary to establish a foundation.
Impossible to see the figures at the top. Necessary to circle the base.
Impossible to know what the thing is without being touched by it.
Necessary to learn names and dates. Impossible to learn a lesson while in love.
Necessary to write it down later. Impossible to touch historical life.
Necessary to touch something. Impossible to imagine a world without the self.
Necessary to imagine the self as equal to the task.
Impossible to see Rome. Necessary to approach its walls.
Impossible to survive history without damage. Necessary to preserve something.
Impossible to speak in the face of the lover.
Necessary to dedicate oneself, to kneel.
Impossible not to hate oneself for this. Necessary to hate oneself for something.
VIII.
“tantis operibus I took to refer not to the manual labor of slaves, but to the architectural works by which Apollodorus or his predecessors of the Flavian epoch had ennobled and beautified both the mons and the locus…”
because the mons in and of itself is but a hill of earth
indicating a certain height and slope
suggesting its other, flatness or even a hole
the body wants to climb, fall in
the problem of manual labor is elided
the bodies of the slaves are looked away from
the mons must be ennobled
and beautified
and don’t forget the locus
IX.
how lofty a hill and (what area of) ground
was carried away for
have been excavated for
removed for
had been raised up by
X.
A refusal to be read, an insistence on reading.
But what does the refusal engender, asks X?
A figure coming to the fore, one hand raised.
A process of cuts, a system of bringing the hand to bear.
A handiwork meant for the eye, originating as touch.
A solid block of marble excavated by slave labor.
A long impossible journey over land, even over sea.
A man inside a scene takes his place, raises his hand.
A gesture which may be read according to a visual code.
A flat surface made to tell a story by way of empty spaces.
A cut means meaning takes shape.
A cut means something gets discarded.
A column is different from a wall; it doesn’t yearn for what it excludes.
A column wants to be looked at, but never fully seen.
A body does the looking, a body fails to see.
XI.
these mighty works
these works
such great structures
such noble works of art
such great works as these
(that is, from the summit of the Column)
(slope of the Quirinal)
(of the Forum Ulpium)
AD DECLARANDVM
XII.
the figures at the top, beautifully completed:
woman sweating in the Roman sun, looking
woman reading a history she can’t touch, dizzy
woman cutting at a column
woman failing to see, refusing to be read
woman with her hand
where the column is
beginning to describe her desire
in block letters / in stone
where the scenes entwine
finding herself on a hill
looking down as if it could
have been her
this whole Rome, that lost man
and his beautiful address
dedicating the monument
where the hill was
no one returns
no one can speak of it
- The Latin text is taken from the inscription on the base of the Column of Trajan. Throughout the poem, there is found text from translations of the inscription by several different authors: Donald R. Dudley, Urbs Roma: A Source Book of Classical Texts on the City and Its Monuments (1967); E. Mary Smallwood, Documents illustrating the principates of Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian (1966); Peter J. Aicher, Rome Alive: A Source-Guide to the Ancient City (2004), and finally Giacomo Boni, Trajan’s Column (1907), from whom the italicized text regarding the phrase “tantis operibus” is also taken. All of these I found compiled at Roger B. Ulrich’s website “Trajan’s Column in Rome,” at http://www.trajans-column.org/. ↩︎
Mia Kang
Mia Kang (she/her) is the author of All Empires Must (Airlie Press, 2025), which won the 2023 Airlie Prize, and the chapbooks Apparent Signs (Ghost City Press, 2024) and City Poems(ignitionpress, 2020). Her poems appear in Gulf Coast, Poetry Northwest, Pleiades, wildness, and more. Named the 2017 winner of Boston Review’s Annual Poetry Contest, Mia has received fellowships from Brooklyn Poets and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, as well as residencies from Millay Arts and the University of the Arts. Mia holds a PhD in the history of art from Yale University. She lives in Philadelphia.