CATO IN UTICA*

It is such a long year - all four hundred and forty-five days!
He's no tyrant, that Caesar - magician, more like, he creates
all the time that he needs to destroy us. The end of the earth
isn't far when the calendar's stretched by the great puppeteer.
What a simple solution it was: that Sosigenes come
out of Egypt to bring back the time the Republic mislaid!
But since Pompey's defeat I have waited on Utica's sand
while my patience was stretching as tight - and I thought the year done
until somebody told me there still were three months to live through -
or die in. And this year hadn't really begun when my friend,
old Metellus, was beaten by Caesar at Thapsus and fled
after losing ten thousand, a massacre rosy as dawn.
Then, run down like a dog, he embraced his own sword.

It seems set that I'll die in Caesar's long year by my hand -
or by his. I sit watching the indigo sea from the palace's steps
and remembering Rome's terra-cotta and stone, cypress swords
pointing up at the gods, the high clouds and the aqueducts' march.
But I do not forget that I'm here in an African port
or that Julius Gaius has threatened to let me go free.
By those palms is the River Bagradas beyond the high dunes.
As it enters the sea its grey blood disappears in the blue.
Is it better to find my own ocean than purchase my life
by a Julian pardon? My dignity would not survive
such a sensible choice. While I rock in the arms of the sea
I'll unsluice my red river, Metellus: it's time to be dead
in the course of this year - all four hundred and forty-five days.

* Cato died in year one of the Julian calendar, 445 days long