Behold the afternoon sun, how slowly it withdraws from the sand, those
darker stains within the shadows, though they have been covered and
covered again, growing darker still,
Behold the stone tiers, how empty now,
Behold this day, merely a day, but rumored it may be the last on which
these simple games, our great sports are ever held--
I, Arius, trainer of the best, matched in my youth against the best,
And against them all,
The swordsmen of every province, the netmen, even the beasts--
Knowing no mother or father save this arena, and no other life,
Twenty-eight killed (more than fifty palms), four times spared (once by the
Emperor, saved by the people thrice),
Sometimes still seeing my portrait on the lamps, the vases, the matrons’
gems
(In addition to the jeweled chains, the helmets, purses, and other favors
once given me),
And my name, that I have heard in song--
And knowing as well a certain midnight of the spirit that comes to all,
when each, in his cell, must be chained against self-destruction,
Only to be scourged on the very next day, by whips and red-hot irons, to
the dangerous fight--
Yet now I hear, with wonder. that none of this has been of any avail,
These combats have had no meaning and are in fact nothing, less than
nothing at all--
As though the fight between the women and the dwarfs had been for nothing,
And the combat between the crippled and the blind. had that no point?
Is it not good that the race shall ever behold itself with pride and
disgust, horror and fright?--
So they say this may be the last of our little games--
A Reading List of Quiet Apocalypse Books.
" 'The excitement is in the discovery of the machine,' said Cogsworth. 'It is never in what the machine discovers.' " --RA Lafferty
"Morning after morning Vermeer sits at his easel, as the world rages out there, the world where people are kneeling in subjection, where people are being branded with a hot iron."
