"The Dying Gladiator" Poem by Daniel Brick

My Italian friends told me, "Don't leave
Italy before seeing 'The Dying Gladiator.'
It is so moving." And so, on my last day,
on my own, I entered the Room of Antiquities
of a small town museum. Sprawled on his back,
his arms folded over his chest, his eyes -
"his hawk-eyes" - fixed on the sky, the gladiator
lay waiting for death to descend. He was dying
the way he lived. Some claimed his death
was unjust, murder really: he had refused to slay
his young opponent whom he had defeated easily.
So other gladiators slew both of them. He watched
his brother-warriors, but did not resist them.
And two streams of blood soaked into arena sand.
Other claimed there was no special heroism:
he was too bloodied to stand, and leave the arena.
His doom was sealed, as if his death had been decreed
by more than human agents. And what do I think
some twenty centuries removed from the event? I want
to see his death as redemptive. Some good must arise
from his suffering even as his body is emptied of life.