Carmina Mucronis: 4

K6.7Artemis

Knowing there is no true honor
in using a slave to cuckold her master,
I take the point equally from friend or foe:
wretched Actaeon running his hounds
among the meadows and groves
would do as well to learn another
avocation than hunting for harts
when a goddess has it out for him.
Tell me, friend or foe, that you
would have resisted a peek at that waist,
those thighs, that shapely neck,
her divine body curving, arching, reaching
for that placid pool, those lucid waters…
Thus, I still hold out hope of buying out
that smart senator who proposed
the streets of Rome be kept lit: “If only,”
he said, “to allow good citizens to find
their way home after sundown.”
Little did Linus the Lazy realize
his self-serving law – written and filed
to succor his baying, fawning public –
would light me a dogged path,
bright as noon, to his midnight door.