Domitian put on a banquet
where the dinner guests were introduced
to their deaths amidst black drapes and blankets
and each divan had a tombstone and youth
by its foot throughout the cautionary wake
then they saw their deaths - young before they grew
much older - get up to dance and shake
mocking them in the emperor’s view
I caught my death watching quiet and dark
grown up and prepared for the business -
though such attendants mature into Parques
and Furies - Minos and Rhadamanthys -
we find ourselves androgyne as we fuse -
something else with our breath will also lose
Oxford
29 November 2018
The Emperor Domitian ( 81 -98 CE) did indeed hold such a party for senators and their wives. Parques are the Parcae or Fates, as in Paul Valéry’s ” La Jeune Parque”, while Minos and Rhadamanthys are the Underworld judges. I made up the bit about the dance, after watching David Bowie’s ” Blackstar”.