The music of ancient Greece <br />and Rome did not come down to us <br />but this morning <br />I read Virgil’s Eclogues <br />struck by the prophecy <br />of a new era: <br />“A great cycle of centuries <br />begins. Justice returns to earth, <br />the Golden Age returns,” he wrote <br />30 years before the end <br />of his millennium, describing <br />the birth of the infant god, come down <br />from heaven. Jesus was 19 <br />when Virgil died at 89. <br />Will the Golden Age ever come? <br />Same faces throw up each generation, <br />same races, emotions, struggles! <br />all those centuries, those countries! <br />languages, songs, discontents! <br />They return here in San Francisco <br />as I sit in the Cafe Trieste. <br />O recitative of years! <br />O Paradiso! sings the jukebox <br />as Virgil and Verdi combine <br />in this life to show <br />this is the only Golden Age <br />there’ll ever be<br /><br />Harold Norse<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/at-the-cafe-trieste/
