I
A youth came ashore from upper Epirus
To the city of Regium, on a Roman galleon;
A Greek, but his mother’s kin hailed from Ilir;
The intermingling of two bloodlines
You could thus see on his face,
And his profile likened to Greek coins,
Tracing his eyes: his brow full of power,
And hair less dark – and lips of coral.
From Regium, along the coast, toward Puteoli
He traveled in a noisy horse-drawn caravan.
It was the time when under imperial will
Building of the roads began,
Of frequent bridges, in smooth stone,
Rock upon rock pointed with mortar –
And many people, and much torment
Shaped granite with bended iron:
Adept in all arts, Emperor Hadrian
Relished the movement of bricks and stones.
From Puteoli, on the Appian pavement,
The Epirian youth proceeded to Koma,
He dreamed of Rome, its Arch
Triumphal, whose vastness
Originates in the very skies,
Even upheld those skies once upon a time.
Truly he alone in the whole caravan
Dreamed – while others deliberated,
How had their world been rewritten?
How much by imperial law, how much by the people? –
Where: at the Market entry or in Trastubernae –
To put up for the night our faithful donkeys and horses?
There is something midst great cities and their environs
– Specially in the evening, specially for a pilgrim –
That darkens or smooths his brow,
Breathing upon him the sigh of a giant –
There’s something in the whisper that first arrives
The moment the city’s gridlike gates are unlocked.
This something – our Epirian sensed right then,
While merchants haggled with the customs men
About the pack-donkeys’ jumbled order –
Trade a few aureus for a lamp on a wall.
Finally entering the city, the caravan,
Sluggish and vast like a cloud,
Once again the youth’s face came into view
Where a crooked street took a turn,
And a guard stood with a bronze harpoon:
“Who art thou?” asked he in his Latin tongue,
“The son of Alexander of Epirus” – and moved on
The donkeys, the horses – and the questioning began again.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
IV
Between dawn and dispersion of night
Pink-flaming light wrestles with darkness
Like Virtue with this-world’s Evil Prince –
Dim, yet sanguine, though ever beguiled.
Between dawn and night is an instant,
When brisk radiance draped in black crepe
Roams about till a bright ray defeats it.
The last star in the heavens then drowns,
While the sun raises its russet brows –
And creation’s recurrent memento
Is ever moved by the Lord’s beckoning.
– At such a time Alexander’s son
To his household from Epirus was returning.
With two fingers resting on his beard, he entered:
He quivered, his hand fumbling through his coat;
Then shaking out its thicker folds –
He ran out with stuttering steps, like a blind man’s.
A woman, watching him from the hall,
Raised the wick in an Etruscan lamp
With a needle and stirred the cooled oil,
Murmuring: “A purse? drachma? doesn’t see it!”
Thus whispering, into dark corners she glimpsed,
And walked on, and hushed, and again she whispered.