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from Tacitus: City of Unseens
The old Annals bored me, a wheezing chronicle of
softhanded
pander-priests: the fragrant meats and oils,
potions to plump a husband,
gutted rabbits dictating a
future we already
know...not a word for God. Better to
write of the flesh, spirit swallowed
up in the body, a dagger
II
bedded in the chewing ox. Will my Annals slice good
from evil? A history
should read like morality, poetry,
epic...but ours was a mean,
obsequious age, monotonous
downfalls dangling from monotonous causes. In
the
Senate, a son prosecuted his father for treason--both were
III
named Vibius Serenus, the docket read as if one placid
man attacked
himself. From the shores of Capri, whirl-
pools of sedition flushed the
eye of Caesar. Men stooping
to pray clutched nooses to their breasts...
In ancient days,
IV
savage man lived in peace: since then we have shaped
ourselves as
beasts; chroniclers tell of women giving birth
to owls, or stunted deer;
even the phoenix, flying in
splendor from Egypt, so appalled the birds
nearby they fell
to the sea dead. History, to sound like poetry?
Devotions
V
sung to the deaf. Our curses continued, bland Heaven
watching all: in
Fidenae, an ex-slave built a shabby
amphitheatre for gladiatorial
shows--starved for
amusements, whole families swarmed up the stands...
suddenly the structure collapsed, crashing outward
VI
and inward, flowing over the crowd. Some found the
kindness of quick
death, but scores of others lay mangled
among the stone and
timbers--frantic, their kinsmen could
see and hear them but could not
pull them out. Days and
nights passed...there they sat, still talking with
the victims,
VII
until at last no moan or answer came from the ruins.
When the rubble was
cleared, they rushed to hug and kiss
the corpses, quarreling over
faceless remains. Thus disease
spread through Fidenae: fifty thousand
perished. Why read
of Romulus, Theseus? A theatre, a city, stained
rocks,
VIII
a tomb...banalities make our epic. What else...Lucius
Calpurnius Piso: he
died a natural death, a rare end for one
so distinguished. Son of a man
whose censorship I have
recorded, he won an honorary Triumph in Thrace,
and lived
to eighty. --Moderate, tightlipped, despite irresistible
IX
pressure from corrupt nobles...accused of moderation, I
suppose--What
more is there to write? A windpipe can
be stretched and stretched, till
flesh must beg for the blade.
All these men, evil and good, are dead: I
owe it to their
ancestors
and to their children
now strolling the leafy avenues
of this quiet city, not to
name them here.
David Gewanter's first book of poems, "In the Belly"
(Chicago, 1997), won the John Zacharis Award from "Ploughshares". His
new volume, "The Sleep of Reason", also from Chicago, is due out in
2003, as is "The Collected Poems of Robert Lowell" (FSG) which he is
editing with Frank Bidart. He was a Witter Bynner Fellow at the
Library of Congress, and teaches at Georgetown.
In Posse:
Potentially, might be ... 
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