Theodotus
If you are truly one of the chosen,
look carefully at how you gain your power.
No matter how much you are glorified, no matter
how loudly the cities in Italy and Thessaly
praise your achievements, no matter
how many decrees in your honour
are issued by your admirers in Rome,
neither your joy nor your triumph will last,
and how superior, what does it mean superior?
Are you going to feel, when in Alexandria, Theodotus
brings you, on a blood-stained tray
the head of a despondent Pompeius.
And don’t content yourself with the fact
that in your banal, restrained, and regulated life
such phenomenal and terrifying things don’t happen.
Perhaps at this hour, Theodotus, invisible, fleshless,
enters the well-ordered house of your neighbour
carrying such a hideous head.
