What only the poets can imagine (1.12.19)

This poem appeared in Epistle to a Godson, a late-life book of poems by W.H. Auden.  The speaker asks an enticing question toward the end, “What can Leo have actually said?”, and then challenges poets (i.e., you and me) to imagine it.

I thought it might make a worthwhile project.  Please answer the question, in a poem, for Wednesday.

An Encounter

                                ─W.H. Auden

The Year: 452. The Place: the southern

bank of the River Po. The forelook: curtains

on further hopes of a Western and Christian

    civilization. 

For Attila and his Hun Horde, slant-eyed, sallow,

the creatures of an animist horse-culture,

dieted on raw meat and goat-cheese, nocent to

    cities and letters,

were tented there, having routed the imperial

armies and preyed the luscious North, which now lay

frauded of mobile goods, old sedentary 

    structures distorted.

Rome was ghastly. What earthly reason was there

why She should now not be theirs for the taking?

The Pope alone kept his cool, to the enemy

    now came in person,

sequenced by psalm-singing brethren: astonished,

Attila stared at a manner of men so

unlike his. “Your name?”, he snapped at their leader.

    “Leo,” he answered, raising

his right hand, the forefinger pointed upwards

the little finger pressed to the thumb, in the

Roman salute: “I ask the King to receive me

    in private audience.”

Their parley was held out of earshot: we only 

know it was brief, that suddenly Attila

wheeled his horse and galloped back to the encampment,

    yelling out orders.

Next morning the site was vacant, they had vanished,

never to vex us again. What can Leo have

actually said? He never told, and the poets

    can only imagine

speeches for those who share a common cosmos:

all we can say is that he rose to the occasion,

that for once, and by His own standards, the Prince

    of this world showed weakness.