"Never would he write freely again..."

They're taking me to prison,
Autronius, the old bastards, Lepidus
And Caecilius with his blind eye, the blood-toothed
Hound and the tricky varmint, running
One with the other like beasts on the hunt...

No tree aetherial to climb, can't burrow
Deep in the fertile earth; the mother
Weeps with every trickling stream. Well
To a place of darkness, then, well
To the insatiable planet's gullet, well
To the steel that closes in strides, stridently,
With a slam...

I'll spend my days in the blackest pitch; with what little light
Drips down through the maw of the cavern's throat
And water from the aging stones,
I'll have to quench my thirst -- it will suffice
For a few short scrawls on real pumice
Instead of pummeled pages. Autronius, the pernicious, uncut grass
Like emeralds now, the smog of the city bastions
Which we so often moaned to me like azure lakes,
Little drops of sky in the darkness of their constellations...

I wonder if I look far enough up these tunnels of monstrous omens,
The ceilings formed in the shape of hundreds, crawling, shadowy,
Do you think I'll see the slightest glimmer of the clement stars?