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'. . . sperate, et vosmet rebus secundis . . ."
---Vergil, The Aeneid

He has departed?  Left the poem unfinished?
What mischief is this?  His imagination
is obviously well and undiminished.
This ends our friendship:  faithless, his desertion
is nothing less than cowardly subversion.
Perhaps I should have earlier suspected
some kind of subterfuge.  I had directed
him to compose the foremost praise of Rome
and of the Pax Augusta---my creation.
But yet, at certain verses in the poem,
a different kind of tone seems to resound:
a delicate emotion too profound
for such a subject (how Rome has subjected
the whole word to the force of her statecraft).
He wastes the tenderest of poetry's
words upon Dido---who, as metaphor,
must represent all of Rome's enemies.
And he dares to depict her . . . not a whore . . .
but as a noble and erotic queen.
None can misread such misinterpretation,
not even in a less than polished draft;
and scholars, who enjoy delving between
the lines, will know exactly what I mean.
I cannot kill him now.  He has eluded
my grasp.  By all my fellow gods, this man's
defection, off to nowhere, has intruded
on my vacation, and disrupts my plans.
I cannot burn the manuscript:  too long
I have promoted it, alluded to it
in certain conversations.  I was wrong
but cannot now admit that, or undo it.
I must release it, soon, to publication;
and, for its faults, provide this explanation---
that Vergil has died at Brundisium
before he could begin completion, some
amended changes for the final version.
Yes . . . he had heat stroke during an excursion
somewhere . . . oh?---at some ruins . . . and is now dead.
And, to whatever shelter he has fled
toward, this 'sad' news eventually will come.
And he will understand what is at stake,
and why this is the strategy I take.

Starward

[jlc]