The Peace Pendant, or Psalm for Augustus

It jounces on

your breastbone

while you dig.

Fettered to your neck

& all its sweat.

We only consider the

headstand of the line within

the wheel. Never

note the space

that’s pieced in four.

Our hand had said it first:

bearing the spreading

V. Five or Pax Romana.

Every Caesar has his

Christ he puts to death.

And each utopia—

sentinels on its border.

Circles have no birth.

Nowhere you can point to

as their finish. Just like

all our wars. The shot

in Sarajevo? Forever

toppling dominoes

to this day.

Do not give me numbers

give me names. In every

script and tongue

that’s ever been. Furrowed

into granite

like the burrow of a

spade in yielding earth.

If the dove is a sign of peace,

where are its battle scars? Where

the loss of feathers from

its snatch of twig & leaf?

The fractured wing it nurses,

the cost of olive’s flight?

How do we know it

sprouted while it lived?

And what of the ascending

sapling—which gave its

budding finger to the air?

What of the worms—

which nourished

boundless roots?

The ones we step on

daily, heedless to their writhes

that scream we suffer.

Andreas Gripp

March 1, 2026

John Franks / Getty Images