ces Romans sont fous

Have not done any of the writing I meant to do tonight. Drat. (One paragraph does not count.)

Also, I am insane, because I've just signed up for a new assignment chunk of writing. Do not expect much else from me for the next few weeks.

Watched the ballet Dracula: Pages From A Virgin's Diary while knitting earlier, and got totally confused by all the symbolism. Will have to watch it tomorrow night with the Director's Commentary, just to try to work out what's going on half the time.

---

In Time of War, XII

And the age ended, and the last deliverer died.
In bed, grown idle and unhappy; they were safe:
The sudden shadow of the giant's enormous calf
Would fall no more at dusk across the lawn outside.

They slept in peace: in marshes here and there no doubt
A sterile dragon lingered to a natural death,
But in a year the spoor had vanished from the heath;
The kobold's knocking in the mountain petered out.

Only the sculptors and the poets were half sad,
And the pert retinue from the magician's house
Grumbled and went elsewhere. The vanished powers were glad

To be invisible and free: without remorse
Struck down the sons who strayed their course,
And ravished the daughters, and drove the fathers mad.

-- W. H. Auden