The Fall of Carthage

In imitation of W. H. Auden's poem "The Fall of Rome."

Wherever something is living, there is a register, open somewhere, in which time is being inscribed.

—Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution

Though we live from hand to mouth,

Records of a trading nation

Seek appropriate quotation.

Problems stirring in the South.

On the shelves of supermarkets,

Random rubbish vast in aspect;

Shoppers trip the light fantastic

Bound for Hades with their baskets.

In the backyard, foreign puzzles,

In the kitchen, fancy spices.

Ask not the undertaker’s prices.

Best cremate our antique muddles?

Writers trained in writing schools

Find it hard to place their pieces.

Herds of reindeer void their faeces.

Politicians  break their rules.

Records of a trading nation,

Figures vanish in the Cloud.

Make the most of what’s allowed.

No one’s left that knows their station.

Caesar pops a sleeping pill.

Ten thousand interns writing code

Advertise the latest mode,

Hack the future for the thrill.

Scipio in the Senate cries.

Somewhere in the long durée,

Salammbô has had her say.

Not much left now but fresh lies.

Cover image: Flaubert's Salammbô by Alfons Mucha (1896). Epigraph: Henri Bergson, L'Évolution créatrice (1907), trans. Donald Landes (2023).

"The Fall of Rome"

by W. H. Auden, written in 1947

(for Cyril Connolly)

The piers are pummelled by the waves;

In a lonely field the rain

Lashes an abandoned train;

Outlaws fill the mountain caves.

Fantastic grow the evening gowns;

Agents of the Fisc pursue

Absconding tax-defaulters through

The sewers of provincial towns.

Private rites of magic send

The temple prostitutes to sleep;

All the literati keep

An imaginary friend.

Cerebrotonic Cato may

Extol the Ancient Disciplines,

But the muscle-bound Marines

Mutiny for food and pay.

Caesar's double-bed is warm

As an unimportant clerk

Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK

On a pink official form.

Unendowed with wealth or pity,

Little birds with scarlet legs,

Sitting on their speckled eggs,

Eye each flu-infected city.

Altogether elsewhere, vast

Herds of reindeer move across

Miles and miles of golden moss,

Silently and very fast.

Thursday, June 11, 2025

Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima)

A path is made by walking on it.

—Zhuang Zhou

7

Merely is its Chinese name.*

Master Zhuang Zhou made it a metaphor for his philosophy.

Its sap smells foul, and the wood is good for nothing,

But these are the merits of its uselessness:

It spreads its seeds in every crack and cranny,

Grows boldly with astounding speed,

Survived the period of Warring States,† and will survive us too.

Why should it not—no one wants it.

It has an enemy, though—

The spotted lantern fly (Lycorma delicatula),

Whose favorite food it is.

L. delicatula is likewise useless,

Unless its use is purely pleasure:

It’s been seen, they say, to copulate for hours on end.

A spotted lantern fly nymph in its final instar, or developmental stage, before moulting—shedding its exoskeleton—and becoming a grown-up. Probably with only one thing on its tiny arthropod mind.

*Ch’un shu (纯属), “merely” or "purely."

†Ca. 480 BCE to 221 BCE in ancient China.

Bearded

Some news is good, some news is bad,

Despair’s advance deliberate.

You can’t escape this idiot state,

Content at dawn, by evening sad.

Too little done and all too late

Stacks peculation's billions up.

With sorrow overflows one's cup.

Tip not the rich man at the gate!

Let’s not complain it's down to fate,

For what's in store's been plain to see,

I think, since apes first crossed the sea—

Avoidable at any rate?

The public thing is out of tricks,

And those to come have rotten luck,

For they’ll inherit all our muck.

The cat knows well whose beard he licks.†

†Old English adage quoted in Robert Graves’ novel The Story of Marie Powell, Wife to Mr Milton (1943).

8-9 June 2025