Lines to the Gracchi

The death - possibly execution - of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in Libya made me recall another of my poems from all of thirty years ago. In it I muse on the choices and costs involved in action in 'the public sphere' and the pathos of human death - yes, even that of a dictator with blood-stained hands. At the time I was thinking of the death of Stalin - who was left to die unattended for days by his henchmen who feared he might recover and punish them for daring to act on their own authority. 

The poem is in syllabics; I was more ingenious in those days. The epigraph, if memory serves me right, is from the mother of the Gracchi who, of course, lived to see both her sons murdered as a consequence of their intervention in public life in the second century BC Roman Republic.

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“...but as it is, I too may have to pray to some river or sea to yield up your body. What faith can we put in the gods or men when we have seen Tiberius murdered?”

Who would elect to the public life, that turmoil

Of bitter ambitions, when so many at

            Your elbow – the clients, the snappers-

   Up, the half-disguised hit men – are eager to snatch

At your entrails, crying, “Stop! Criminal! You

Have insulted my party!” at the first hint of

            An action? And who would set his mind on

   Relevant things, giving rights to outsiders

Or rebuilding the drains, when the ticklish mob,

Anguished at receiving no presents, goes wild

            In the streets, bludgeoning its statesmen

   To death? Over luncheon tables deals are

Discussed, briefcases tapped and Swiss bank account

Numbers scribbled on cards. Outside, policemen

            Square up to the roaming death squads, but the

   Rain never stops and stucco tumbles from

The neutral faces of buildings: somehow, even

The weather is writing your bill of attainder.

            I would be as Horace, fastidiously

   Removed from the hurly-burly, tasting

The fruits of other men’s peace, but giving back

The modest price of an Ode for the Secular

            Games. It is the seasons interest

   Me, the ageing of my skin, the annals of my

Lust. Sometimes, though, in mid-sentence I see the rag of

Cicero’s hand, nailed to the Rostra, accusing my

            Tipsy selfishness. Perhaps, after

   All, writers have power, though too often their finest

Images are their deaths. But what privileges

Could I claim the morning after a coup? Only

            To add my weight to a human barricade

   Or slink off into the back streets there to

Embrace silence or the new authorities. It has taken

Me thirty years and many bad poems to grasp

            That life is very hard, that the river

   And sea gods, replete with tribute, are not anxious

To discuss justice. When someone is murdered, even

A tyrant – for sprawled on his deathbed he suffers

            The sea-change which all of us suffer –

   We should shake the stars with our fury, but

Afterwards there is nothing for it but to renew

The fabric of living. In an age when we do

            Not believe in ulterior purpose

   That is the one thing we aim at time after time.

© December 1981