A Consummation Devoutly To Be Wished

I think about death all the time.

A couple of years back I was mightily struck with the idea of earthly immortality. There was this mad doctor who was going round saying human life could be indefinitely extended and I was thinking, "Wheeee- what fun it'll be- on and on and on and ...."

Now I can't imagine what got into me. Milennium fever perhaps.

Because now I take comfort- great comfort- from the thought that sooner or later this giddy ride is going to stop. It puts things in perspective. Why get all worked up about- I don't know- the idiocy of the human race- when- quite shortly- I'll be stepping from the car and out through the turnstile? 

I'm 56- and closer to my end than my beginning. Happy days.

Scylla

 

The Emperor Tiberius commissioned this statue of Scylla attacking Odysseus's ship for his grotto at Sperlonga. Well, not exactly this statue, because the original got smashed to powder by a gang of silly, Dark Age monks and what you're seeing is part painstaking reconstruction, part inspired guesswork. 

Whatever- it's one of my favourite things. 

And here's the poem I wrote about it eight years ago.

                                    SCYLLA

                                    So did Tiberius slope from Rome

                                    To think or fuck?  Is the marble Scylla

                                    Made for his holiday home at Sperlonga

                                    A porno-object, a six-cunt special-

                                    Or was she there to remind him how heroes

                                    Get batted about?  Some monks with hammers

                                    Broke her apart and her shining pieces

                                    Lay under sand in the salt lagoon

                                    Till this century we patched them together

                                    And brought her back.  Me, I adore her,

                                    Salt-water-wallowing, free child of Nature,

                                    Rearing up on her two coiled tails-

                                    Six dog's heads where her sex should be,

                                    Braced like a figurehead, beautiful-

                                    As she grips the prow of Ulysses' ship

                                    And lashes out with a busted tiller.