Parthia

News from the border.

All the brown summer no disturbance,

not a raid or scramble, not even a brushfire

(tell Caesar to put that in his pipe and smoke it),

no breath of mutiny, our troops too bored,

well-seasoned and well-fed

like fat sparrows rolling in the dust.

Only a foreign arrow found last week

stuck through the fabric of Lotho's tent

and this message in bad Latin wrapped around it,

possibly scrawled in blood:

We come on you in time.

We will fall everywhere like flakes of snow.

You do not know us. We are history.