The Death of the Author

"By the gods who dwell above, high o'er the plains of Ida
Riding across the world in their winged chariots, their crystal palaces
Of shining gold like the rose-light of dawn: there's Venus who has mercy,
And Cupid of the admirabile locks, Apollo with his halting bow, and Neptunus
Clementia, great pitier of things. If ever mortals, besieged
By the wailing walls of a great sea, or sundered in
The labyrinth of time have clapped their palms together, not in kind applause,
But out of hope for sympathy, and sent fleet-footed prayers to Zeus above,
And nor did their hopes deceive them -- from Kunthia on the virgin rock,
Ariadne on the dire straits, and passing by the wayward sea
Betied Ulysses in his reverent ecstasy
Of sirens (Muse, inspire me
To higher things!) -- then surely where the gods take pity
There is room for mortal hope, there is room for clemency to spare the proud
And save the meek!" Thus was Turnus' prayer, and just as, four months after May,
Boreas takes summons from the sweet West Wind, and while
Zephyrus reclines to the banquet, pageantry of rest, and sips the sweet nectar
The nymphs procure when, wrapping garlands round their holms, they tap
The inner spirit of the trunk, and gather in the bark sweet drops of breath,
Aquillo still takes up his glacial sword, and iced eclairs
Of thunder, girds the shoes that beat across the chasms and the cloak of snow
That fills them in, and decorates his brow not with the laurel of Phoebus Apollo,
But with the croceus-born mistletoe to hang in rich-hued red above his grinning scowl
(the kind you see often on angry skulls, long-dead, rotting
Somewhere far in the desert winds) then jumps on the world, seizes the globe
Like the head of a victim, pulls the bull by her white-haired scalp, and slits
The ruddy blood from the just now brown-stained throat, so anger --
Menin! Rage! -- consumes Aeneas like the brazen branches of a fire
Make the red and silver leaves wither into wrinkled crisps of blackened ash
When druids dance 'mong the elms on autumn's solstice day, brandishing
The ripped, torn limbs of the forest, flashing with fire and globules of flame
Spitting into the spinning air. His fingers wrinkle, tighten round his hilt,
He sees the prostrate belt, and his brows furrow like fields, his face
Tightens up like a dried plum, old orange, franged fruit, and the elixir
Of madness and wine imbibes his veins, breaks through to the meters of conscience:
Now all drunk with anger, now all iron and ashes of conquest --
And nor did the prayer go unheard:
"The time for prayers is past, passed like the sparrow
Passes the holm, where the ring-doves take their nests, before the fallow fields of fall
And the hungry hawk, when still all are marigolds blooming, and the lilies dip, aloft,
Their cisterns of beauty, and the sun shines clear on the golden earth. Then cities
Long at war might rest, their leaders' faces lose their studied
Gloom and a smile might break like a rainbow on lips that advancing armies
Clash with joy, while they hug like brothers who lay down their arms --
The farmers beat swords into plough-shares then, and the wolf hangs his head for the lamb
And lions benev'lent for mice, like some great creature that would take in his claws
All the little, lost things of this world, and whisper like breeze from the storm,
'There you are; you're okay: for you too are beloved...' Oh but I mourn
For faces pallid and lost, thousands of sinking faces, masked in the hollows
Of hell where the air is cool, where deep whispers echo, wail from the rocks,
Downcast like the mast of the sunken that pokes above the depths, while a ripped flag,
Black, Waves like the flicker of hope in their eyes. No, the time for May
And the fragile flowers of beauty is past; you killed Pallas, my beloved, my last
Kindness in a ruined world. Now that belt clings richly to your shoulder, Turnus,
And I see the gems you must have admired, crying each for the rubies of slain,
The sapphires like his eyes, and the marbled medallion a fragment of face:
No! You cavorted! No! You wrung it round with a pretty one, showed it to Juturna
And bathed in her pleasure, feeling cool the waters flowing around you, cleansing your hands,
Setting the record of deeds in the straits, and flowing out to the vast ocean where the waves
Wrap round the shore, rap the shore, tap the carving shore, like a hammer,
Into the inevitable and invisible countenance of my revenge. Blood flows back, Turnus,
Back into the rivers, back upwards of falls, and the whole world wrinkles into itself
Like a burning rose. There is no forgiveness for triumph, and there is no sorrow
For truth." And with that Aeneas grasps his sword, his long blade, silver to the sharpened tip,
And with a trembling hand like the tremors of earth his quaking arm
Raises it into the air, and plunges it down the way a man looking over a pit
Throws a rock, and waits, in celerity of being, for the flint-strike to fall.

Then the vengeful blade found the fountain of breath, plunging into his central, his heart,
The way when a poem is read, and the author speaks to the very seams
Of the reader's garments (new and green
Seem the washing and clashing of time).
So the sword stopped in its frame, to the hilt, connected with lame and perspiring Turnus, expiring,
The way a sharp lash binds together all flesh, digging deep captive arms to the bone,
Pushing down to the very marrow, the core, and then biting firm
Like a dog that drags a dead deer, and tastes the running blood. Then Turnus' soul gasped out
With Aeneas' trembling breath, and both fled to the shadows below.