Me And My Goats Poem by Tom Billsborough

It was originally titled Ite Domum Saturae which is Latin for Go home replete. It is a poem about the Latin poet Virgil and in particular his 10th Eclogue, which in my opinion contains Poetry's greatest ever line... Omnia vincit Amor et nos cedamus amori! Love conquers all and we must yield to love. I think the Latin Title put people off as nobody read it! So I changed the title! Virgil's poem is somewhat like a letter to his friend and fellow poet, Gallus, who is having woman trouble. His girl friend, formerly attached to Mark Antony, has suddenly become an Army grouplie and buzzed off to the Rhineland border of the Roman Empire. Gallus is at his wit's end so Virgil tries to sort it out. but he is wise enough to realise you can't cure love so he reflects upon it in the evening as he tends his goats. My poem is an attempt to imagine his feelings. The 10th Eclogue is the last of a sequence and I'm sure we all have this panic of What do I do next! The goats going down to the lower pastures is symbolic of his completion of this poetic sequence. Read as a whole the Eclogues give an impression of a very wise and kind man.

These were my reflections on the last few lines of Virgil's 10th and last Eclogue. The goats going down the slopes in the evening symbolised the fact that Virgil had just completed a series of poem. I think we have mixed feelings of relief and sadness when a work is finished. I tried to reflect that in my tribute to Virgil, a wise and deeply contemplative man.