When the smell of the soil inland oppresses you and you feel how far away
the sea is, when you are overwhelmed
by this huge sensation that never leaves you,
of fatigue,
you sit down at midday and read again, half in the pergola’s shade,
the satires that Juvenal wrote at Aswan
in his dubious exile in Egypt.
You’re not interested in his fierce criticism of Roman customs,
or the description of the filthy streets or their din,
and you’re indifferent to the banquets and gluttony of senator Emilius Paulus
or the adultery of his wife, Bibula.
The only thing you want, each time you raise your eyes from your book
is to find set out before you his same landscape:
to watch the Nile gliding placidly by, or to follow with your eyes
the flight of a white ibis cleaving the air,
and thus enjoy, you too,
your days of exile.