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