Nero’s Term
Nero was not alarmed when he heard
the prophesy of the Delphic Oracle.
“Let him fear the seventy-three years.”
There was still ample time to enjoy himself.
He is thirty years old. The term
the god allots to him is quite sufficient
for him to prepare for perils to come.
Now he will return to Rome slightly fatigued,
but delightfully fatigued from his journey,
which consisted entirely of days of pleasure
at the theaters, the gardens, the athletic fields . . .
evenings spent in the cities of Greece . . .
Ah the voluptuous delight of nude bodies, above all . . .
Those things Nero thought. And in Spain Galba
secretly assembles and drills his army,
the old man of seventy-three.
by C. P. Cavafy
from The Complete Poems of Cavafy
Harvest Books, 1961