Leaning on the rail he looked so small,
so tiny, so fragile, so dark;
a giant in life left with memories
packed in a minute case.

A defeated Bonaparte leaving the gates
of powerless Troy for Elba;
deceived by a cavalry of men on goats,
lied by a column of incompetent toads.

He looks back and all he sees is his own ruins,
his own mistakes, his own betrayals, his lies;
he glances sideways and all he doesn’t see
is the weeping sphinx and the shade of an obelisk.

He looks bow to see infinity haar unveil,
deaths gaze back on his untouchable stern;
he is an old man, he says to himself silently,
an emperor in his baroque plot of a thorn garden,

He smiles and he calls it
…his Austerlitz.