In Alesia, our last town, our final stronghold,
we sent our women and our children out.
When Caesar sent them back, we, to feed our
warriors,
we let them starve outside the walls of Alesia.
Our men fought well but not as well as Caesar’s,
and in Alesia our handsome king conferred on us a
choice:
You may kill me or deliver me to Caesar.
We could not kill him. Outside the breached walls of
Alesia,
our broken stronghold, we delivered him to Caesar,
and we watched him throw himself down before
Caesar
and we watched him throw out his arms,
surrendering,
and we heard Caesar speak coldly to him, our
handsome king,
and we saw him bound in chains. With scornful
clemency,
Caesar dismissed us. For a long time we heard
nothing.
We ploughed our charred fields, using each other as
oxen.
Some of us found new gods and some of those gods
were Roman.
We paid our grain levies and, when he demanded
them,
we sent our sons to Caesar and he made them
soldiers.
In Alesia, we fathered new children and smiled sadly,
remembering our first children, first wives, our
handsome king,
and then, in Alesia, we heard they’d kept him caged
six years,
six years in a cage, our handsome king, our famous
warrior,
six years before they dragged in through their capital,
some gray barbarian from some forgotten war, our
handsome king,
our well-nigh savior, a relic of an old war six years
settled.
We heard they tortured him and beheaded him, and
his head
jabbed on a pike and left till it fell off,
as indeed we have ourselves honored the Romans.
We wish now we had killed him, our handsome
king-
embraced him, kissed him, killed him, and buried
him in Alesia.
If we were Romans, we could have killed him,
and if he were a Roman, he would not have made us
choose.
In Alesia
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