Justum et tenacem propositi virum.
Horace
Horace
He scores his withered tendons on tarmac,
a scene with the stage mercenary-laid
and clenching a few muscles in his back,
so passers-by see his taut shoulder blades,
Berating his woman sadly as far
as I remember helped him from the floor,
to soon be tangled underneath a car,
as consequence he needs his nurse no more.
She righted his cap when they were eighteen,
ardently plucked an invisible thread
from his shoulder, and rubbed his visage clean.
He smiled beneath the squirming, never said
an adequate adieu, the mirror cracked
up at him, and for this he could not stand,
Penelope beamed, Odysseus packed
and silently he stroked his new bride’s hand.
In mess-tents spent behind enemy lines,
with Schopenhauer, Schiller, Goethe’s Faust,
ironically he returned on his spine,
and left titles where the infirm were housed,
so his acclaim went stale on neutral ground,
initially extolled with condescension,
presented to his sweetheart wheelchair-bound,
far too ashamed to give medals a mention.
Years later, she eases him into bed,
mutely reciting his fantasy toast
to all the luminaries in his head,
and finally the woman he loves most.
This doting monologue she’ll not receive,
it’s lost in his growing causticity,
until they glimpse a chance of a reprieve,
in one split second on the city street,
when inching and wincing along the road,
Dido and Aeneas, aged, morose,
of better days and not the Highway Code
they reminisce, over the life they chose.
Refused his wife to have a handle-hold,
hated themselves, but never one another.
Lamenting how two rouge-cheeked teens grew old,
they lovingly meet the traffic together.
Patiently stare at equalising death,
with time a gift the pair can ill afford,
and when he ushers out his final breath
he’s smiling knowingly: peace is assured.