Sublime

Lying to the side amidst the uncleared rubble was a decapitated, still furry, matted-furry, little cat’s head.

Someone pulls a trigger, sets off a bomb, drives a bus full of tourists off a bridge, and what’s left in the wake isn’t just shell casings, wreckage, bodies. There’s something else. Something bad. An aftermath. A recoil. A reaction to all that anger and pain and death.

CICERO MAY WELL have been sitting in the senate on the Ides of March 44 BCE when Caesar was assassinated, an eyewitness to a messy and almost bungled murder. A gang of twenty or so senators crowded round Caesar on the pretext of handing him a petition. One backbencher gave the cue for the attack by kneeling at the dictator’s feet and pulling on his