from Letters About Things Read

(Horace’s Epistles, Book 2, Epistle 1)

In the little garden of Santa Monica

I read under the pepper-tree

I read in Horace of a certain Varius

Who sang of Augustus, that is, what fortune, his commander

And Roman corruption had done for him. Just little fragments

Copied out in the work of another, bear witness

To high diction. It wasn’t worth

The pain of copying out any more.

Bertolt Brecht