Caesar

Se VoL. XXXVI

at) @ e No. II

A Magazine of Verse

MAY, 1930

ROMANS

CAESAR

yer CAESAR rose at dawn.

"T have been away in dream, revising and defining,

Dragging the darkness for the sun.

Caesar's an empty jug; belief's refined in him

To precious graining, antinomies devour

The moments of a mind divided,

Spawning rebellion on his province.

This inner quibbling is a rot in Rome.

The times are sick of juggling doubts,

Outclowning freaks of circumstance,

Ready for desperate treachery,

Conceived of boredom.

Perhaps it were better to have seen

God in each figure and line, to have fled

The wrangling of reasons, tripping and disputing,

To have crowned the corpse of debate,

Confused the chaos for some golden riot,

Some dance in a fruitful season;

Not balking at the visible we know,

But playing variations on the myth.

Well, we have stripped the music now,

Spitted the weaving on our logic.

I am tired of armies and the glory in Gaul,

Having been tricked into greatness anyway.

My mother suckled me with a kind of death-

Wisdom too soon, and late remorse.

"How do the dead acquire indifference?

Theirs are no whisper-loving ears;

And even the calm quaint lies above their houses

Do not much amuse them.

But why does this flow in the swift channel?

Who spoke of auguries here yesterday?"

Stranger, you saw them bury him,

You saw dead Caesar in the dimming earth

Where stir a darkness and a whispering?

We rammed this passion down the streets of Rome,

Rome smelling of rats by the waterside,

Where laughter knew a fierce betrayal.

And when the weeping was done with,

They found a cousin to Cassius in the gutter,

A liberal citizen much the-morning-after,

With a hollowed stomach and high fever,

From which, among other things, and for sake of the

common gaiety,

He shortly lay down and died.