Omens are always bad

...bad as the omens were, The end was wrose, for as the bride went walking Across the lawn, attended by her naiads, A serpent bit her ankle, and she was gone.

~ Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk 10 In times past I have found that certain illusions of dearth plague my mind with dear fear. The passage in pearly white sandals of my wife, across the lawn of our reception, made me think that someday those feet would bleed, and that I would not be there to tend to them. I crossed over into Phlegethon, I think ...

Into that thick and murky atmosphere, Fear gathered in me as my error fled

` Dante, Inferno Canto XXXI So what? The tenebrous veil of this valley came as a surprise to me? Hardly! I set myself to sweet worship and a love born of hopelessness. I did look on the face of theos, like Moses, and I spoke these words:

The Lord made a babble of the language of all the world; from the place the Lord scattered men all over the face of the earth

` Genesis 11. And so I die slowly, being misunderstood. No hunter of men like Nimrod, just a false prophet of my own fantasies. And somewhere, someplace, my Venus still walks, in her pristine white sandals, soft soles waiting to be kissed. And some other man has her. Yet I write, with sorrow and Mozart as my two best friends. Oh, to die! "Old man! 'tis not so difficult to die." `Byron, Manfred III.151.