The Ides of March

In Competition No. 2486 you were invited to submit a retrospective verse comment from the other world on the assassination by Caesar or by one of the conspirators. Most of you chose to put yourself in Caesar’s bloodied sandals, consigning the conspirators to the sidelines, which they would have hated. Adam Campbell was pithy and to the point:
Talk about being stabbed in the back!
Nasty way of getting the sack.
The prizewinners, printed below, scoop £25 each. The extra fiver goes to D.A Prince, who used some nice half rhymes. I particularly liked ‘whine’ with ‘Elysium’, the rhyme and the meaning working together in a very satisfying way. A commendation to Ray Kelley, whose Caesar, vanity undented by millennia of self-reflection, laments being played by Louis Calhern rather than by Olivier in Joseph Mankiewicz’s monochrome masterpiece.

So Death, the necessary end, comes quick
In Fate’s conspiracy. I now could bear
The cutting thrust of bloody Senate blades
And manifesting of Calpurnia’s dream,
Did not the needle of the Soothsayer’s whine
Echo through all Elysium. I told
You so. A gnat in life, he’ll buzz old news
To slow, ear-stinging death. The Ides of March —
Beware, the Ides of March! A speaking clock
Could commandeer more notice and respect
Than this shrill-squeaking calendar. Perchance
When Brutus sands are run, we’ll face to face,
Re-knife, and hunt him down — I told you so
No more — till all the thronging gods combine
To laud the Roman freedoms and an end
Of petty Sooth. We’ll hit him with a swat.
D.A. Prince

Tip-offs the batting wicket would be sticky;
Calpurnia urging me to take a sickie;
Dreams of my statue gushing gore; a priest
Haruspically construing a heartless beast;
Foreboders boding, grim soothsayers sooth-ing:
To stay home would have been the smart-to-do-thing.
But when the ace spin-doctor of the Romans
Made fine-sign auguries out of look-doom omens
I chose to go, and — well, you know the rest.
There were a few screen versions; in the best
Gielgud played Cassius, Brando Antony,
James Mason Brutus; but unhappily
Louis Calhern played me, and all admit
The fellow simply wasn’t up to it.
Why