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And when you passed among the bloodless dead
it was never repeated against you
that you ever disgraced the banquet by quitting it sober,
ever let a rare dish pass untasted,
ever reproached the lupanar with the austerity of your attitudes,
ever embarrassed the licence of the actors with your frown,
or that you lost or rejected
a single gift of the sunlight,
saving those handkerchiefs from Saetibis in Spain,
filched from you at a dinner by Asinius,
or by the Iberian whose white teeth,
incessantly flashed through the resinous smoke of the torches,
filled the stifling Roman night
with the green lightning of your obscene wrath.

How long ago was it?
Too long for even such fiery dust as yours
to stay alight in the black earth.

Only the gold silence of the long afternoon
and the shimmer of ripe grass tops
stirred by an adder gliding away.

Between the dry stems of the tangled grass
the thick dust has a bitter scent.