Sennet

                                 concluding Act 1, Scene 2, of
                                 The Tragedy of Julius Caesar

     The trumpet blows, and Caesar leaves the stage
     To enemies he does not know he has.
     Though twice forewarned, he somehow fails to gauge
     The many characters around him as
     Conspirators. Refusing to stay home
     That Ides of March, he struggles to believe
     His third (and last) wife’s bloody dream could come
     To something she or anyone would grieve.
     So hubris goes, among the Romans and
     Elizabethans and Americans,
     The players rather slow to understand
     Antagonists are all too close with plans
     To ruin those who long have been in power
     And have declined to abdicate or cower.

A native Virginian, Jane Blanchard lives and writes in Georgia.  Her fourth collection with Kelsay Books is In or Out of Season (2020). 

Founded in 1957 by the great Russell Kirk, Modern Age is the forum for stimulating debate and discussion of the most important ideas of concern to conservatives of all stripes. It plays a vital role in these contentious, confusing times by applying timeless principles to the specific conditions and crises of our age—to what Kirk, in the inaugural issue, called “the great moral and social and political and economic and literary questions of the hour.”