Hypothesis 10

How the flamen dialis would have loved these baseball games,
no doubt however let down by the lack of public executions
on the pitcher's mound, between live music and the little dogs
being fed Frisbees. What would they make of country music

having only known hymns and funeral dirges, accompanied
by skin drums, tabors, kitharas? How about the heavier metals
forged into pots and pans and car parts, a world
in which a trash can lid's a shield without a sword?

How completely strange the music arriving through the cone
they would have tried to wear in the hotel lobby perhaps
or as sun-hats? Do they ask why approachers recoil?
What would the pagans make of rockets, bibles, underwear,

fishnet stockings, cable networks, internets, net vs. gross pay
unlike the tithes for campaigns -- and how about highways
and talk shows, and in retrospect, would they appreciate
Johnny Carson's salubrious, self-congratulatory wit, how

would they access it other than by scanning special offers
on late-night infomercials, in a language that they could not read?
Would they instinctually prefer the Latin Leno to Gothic Letterman?
Would they master correctly placing the video cassette in the slot ?

What if they didn't carry plastic money in their street robes?
What if they needed to bring their ceremonial vestments to the cleaners?
Would they know when to ask for starch or for no starch?
Would they try to pay with dinari a Flavian emperor had minted

or the big gold ones the Antonines paid them under the table once?
Would they be mesmerized by the holograms on a Mastercard?
Do you think they'd want to see Caligula in the revival houses?
Would the orgy scenes recall the wrestling in a circus maximus?

Traveling together in a minivan, what do they make of cul-de-sacs?
What's their use, if you already read your destiny in a sun-dial?
Are bird's eggs yanked from nests but yet unbroken still portents,
especially when they're lying on yellow traffic stripes, not

in residential neighborhoods? And if they're blue, not speckled?
What do they make of racoons as they struggle through dumpsters?
Can they make sense of waffles, manhole covers, toilet seats,
Are they bewildered and amazed on road-trips by the automatic ones?

Are they seduced by the fragrance of the liquid soap in the dispenser,
and having confused it with nectar, do they lick it from their palms?
And if they don't see a cloud in the sky, does that mean no more omens
And does that mean a hare escapes a hawk's clutch or an orchid wilts,

That fortunes can't be read in cows' guts, that life doesn't begin again
In gouts of blood, that the crotches of oak trees will refuse to flower,
Forever and ever? Why pre-board? Can't a ferry go fast enough?
When they close their eyes, do they dream or do commercials appear?