SMALL ROMAN HEAD FROM MILREU Poem by Jorge de Sena

This evanescent, acute head,
so sweet in her decapitated look,
reveals nothing of the portentous Empire:
no tongues meet in empty eyesockets,
no legions march in her mouth,
in the curved nose you will not find
people massacred and betrayed.
She contemplates life sweetly,
knowing how she must, if she can,
refuse thought with a little madness,
for a brief moment relinquishing
the firm tranquility of cool reason.
She is a dream of virtue: the slave
who owned her never, in those sad
moments of having a body, possessed her
beyond this reach. And her husband,
if indeed it was his seed in her, never
felt the weight of this long look
resting upon him. She lived and died
like a goddess among columns, men,
meadows and rivers, shadows and harvests,
theaters and winepresses. Yet
she was no goddess: the empire went on
ravenously swallowing all the gods
it had no face for, so humans,
to humanize the gods, lent
their own which now are lost.
This evanescent head survived:
neither goddess nor woman, only knowledge
that nothing can save us from ourselves.