"The Fall of Rome" by W.H. Auden (poetry reading)

Obviously it's about how civilisations fall. The poem has a particular relevance today.

The mundane, petty matters that bring down empires have a particular poignancy right now. They are contrasted with those things that really continue to make the rockin' world go round.

The "imaginary friend" is the person the literary man writes for, his appreciative audience, like Salinger's remark "Do it for the fat lady."

Cerebrotonic refers to somatotype, contrasting with mesomorphic (muscle-bound), and it means a thin, intellectual - like Auden, perhaps.

"Unimportant clerks" gamble away our life-savings.

And always present are lifeforms that can overgrow us and outbreed us very quickly.