When Aeneas preferred the gust of salty wind,
the mad flapping of sails and the phantom of Italy
to Dido, she ordered a pyre made and stabbed herself,
and burned herself, having lost all taste for living.
Her Carthage was not changed, her throne was there,
her people were still obedient to her every mood and call,
everything was the same as it had been before the Trojan came,
he didn't even take the expensive sword she had given him.
Then why this death? Being in love and limitless
showed Dido how confined and insecure she had really been,
how bitterly she had tried to hush her loneliness and terror
by her frenzied empire building. Her love was like a bird
flying in through one window and escaping through the other,
a splash of tremulous wings, making the stagnant air unbearable.