that, if crossed,
causes calamities, civil wars,
plagues, can ruin empires,
cut off the head of a queen,
expose a king's heart on a pike.
However, it can also create states, turn mud into fish,
burn blood in bedrooms,
deform the face of death until it
becomes beautiful.
That river is sometimes a river,
but it can perhaps be another frontier, another limit.
For Caesar it was a river,
for Troy it was the love of Helen.
Thus each man finds his diadem,
his Rubicon.
Thus the lot is cast against the ashes,
against all the license of oblivion.
The die is cast, said Caesar,
others will speak words of love
in a woman's ear,
and there will be no more tenderness or fear to save him.
He will have crossed the river. Rome will have fallen.