Hope you men are well, Christians all.
Please forgive my lapses of friendship and common kindness,
often I forget the calling and election and default to self,
and I wear shame like a wardrobe.

Anyhow, here's a few words from Virgil,
translated, but powerful.

Virgil from Georgics I

Who dares deny the burning truth of the sun?
When Caesar was destroyed, the sun was black.
At midday, in a cloudless sky, black!
It warns us of all manner of uprisings—
of wind, of rain, of hail, and of humankind,
for views of the mind change, and the heart conceives
new emotions.

The earth shook and the sea
shuddered in its bed. It was dark at noon,
and many feared that the darkness would last forever
when Caesar died. The sun had shown it all.
Dogs had howled, and birds had chattered and cried,
and mighty Etna’s furnace had boiled up
to answer fire with fire, to turn black rocks
white hot, and melt them runny as rain.
In Germany thunder rolled as if to recall
the clash of an army’s weapons – Caesar’s own.
The Alps shook as with an army’s marching.
There were voices singing out of groves of trees.
Pale ghosts shimmered in the peculiar light.
Cattle spoke. Humans were struck dumb.
Rivers stood still. Plains yawned to chasms.
In the temples, ivory wept and hard bronze
broke into sweat. The Po overflowed its banks
and pretended to farm – herding cattle to death,
and harvesting woods and fields in a labor of rage.
The other omens were awful: wells flowed blood;
wolves howled in the cloudless sky; comets blazed.
Feel it aright, and a man could feel Phillipi,
the clang of Roman sword upon Roman sword,
the pools of our blood flowing back together
on the Macedonian plain, and at last the farmer
(always the farmer, first and last the farmer)
driving his curved plow to till the earth
and finding the Roman javelins covered with rust,
and digging with his shovel and striking a helmet.
Wonder at the white bones in the earth,
and feel in your own bones the sun’s fire,
the fire of life itself.

Hail, Caesar!
May the gods allow Caesar, our new Caesar,
to right this overturned time. We have atoned
for old Troy’s sins, and with more blood
than Troy ever spilled.


I feel the dread,
and the sun burns in me, burns like a fever.
The world is full of war, and at home, crime
resembles a war. Men flock to the city
leaving their fields to weeds, their tools to rust.
Plowshares now are beaten into swords.
It’s bad in Asia, bad in Europe, bad . . .
No treaties hold, no laws hold, nothing
but Mars, blood red . . . He holds it all,
hurtling through the sky in his chariot.
I feel those wheels rumble. I feel the sway
of speed. The horses are mad and running faster.
They ought to check. They ought to answer the reins.
There ought to be reins.

But there are none.




translation: David R. Slavitt