Empire is coming down in the roar of a big machine — hot metal, methedrine, dive bombers, dum-dum bullets — and the speaker still claims it with Lucretia, the reflection he will not release. He hears the city’s sons and dispossessed ordered to get down, get undressed, get pretty, while he and she hold the kingdom, the key, the empire now as then: no doubt, no direction taken. Lucretia is held as a glamorous and dangerous presence, invited only to dance the ghost with me.

What remains is possession under collapse, not grief. Looking hard through the wreckage yields little evidence and almost no feeling; the voice stays low and unshaken over a martial motor groove that drives forward without break until it simply cuts off. The pact outlasts the fall.