Narrationem "Bellorum Stellarium" si recoquere numeris Latinis velim, huiuscemodi initium faciam. Utrum aliquando plura scribam necne haud scio. Interpretationem soluta oratione Anglicam adieci in extremo. Quo haud serio animo hos vaniverbosos vermifluos versiculos scripserim nihil, ut spero, attinet dicere.
(If I should want to recast the story of "Star Wars" in Latin verse, I'd begin it like this. Whether or not I'll write more at some point I have no idea. I put a paraphrase in English prose at the end. I hope it goes without saying just how seriously I took this little hexametric fuckton of silliness.)
Bella Stellaria Ad Camenae Modos
Ille ego qui quondam vulgo sermone solebam
Vertere contextos versus prisco meŏ more
Antiquûm virûm. At ecce mihi peregrina Camena
Mandavit rudibus plectrum digitis modulari
Ausonium. Sed quid faciam hic, inconditus auctor,
Hac aetate ubi non Latii valet alma loquela?
Sis peregrina, Camena. Peregrinemur in orbe
Pes ubi mortalis lustrat super immortalia metra.**
Carmina condamus vatum illibata vetuste.
Proelia fulmineis per stellas ensibus acta
Concussis canimus. Quae evorterit astripotens* Vis,
Cur acies longe pridemque galaxiae in illo
Cognatae bellarint, quo Crucialigerorum*
tot bombardae fulgerent, tot quare Bothanos*
Sythanus* Dominus tortos effuderit aspri
In vacuum spatii exanimans, quousque Aethrobatorum*
Saevirent animi, tu animo mi evolve volenti,
Dum valeat nobiscum Vis, O Musa novorum.
Olle planeta fuit, quem olim insedere coloni
Humani: Tatuinus, circumfusus arenâ
Flaminibus iactatâ. Hic Titan torruit ingens
Terram quam pridem profugi domuêre, coacti
Iuribus hosteque adhuc infando nomine. Et Arma
Aethera supra nunc flagrant. Tormenti ululatu
Fulmina fulminibus concurrunt. Caelicarinam*
Fulgivomi concidunt. Cedunt tenuia scuta
Instante Astriduellona*...
*Has locutiones excogitavi omnes.
**Hunc versum feci consulto hypermetricum.
(I am he who, in my old-school way, once was wont to translate the woven verses of men from auld lang syne into my vernacular. Yet here a strange exotic Muse has charged me to wring rhythm out of the Ausonian lyre with my awkward, untrained fingers. But what am I to do here, a half-baked author, in this age where the nourishing speech of Latium has no sway at all? Muse, be exotic indeed. Let us go alien in a world where the mortal foot will wander in orbit beyond immortal measures, and let us fashion such a song as poets of yesteryear never even got a sip of.
We sing the battles waged amid the stars at the clash of lightsabers. Of those things that the star-ruling Force upended, Of why kin battle lines long ago in that galaxy far away went to war, of what so many X-Wing canons blazed for, of why the Sith Lord cast so many tortured Bothans into the breath-crushing vacuum of cruel hard space, of the end to which the passions and minds of the Skywalkers raged, spin the tale into the mind of willing me, O Muse of the new, so long as the Force is strong with us.
There was that planet, long settled by human colonists: Tatooine, enveloped in gust-hurled sand. Here a great sungod parched a terrain which refugees, forced by laws and an enemy whose name remains unmentionable, tamed. Now, weapons are blazing above its atmosphere. With canon-shrieks thunderbolts vie with thunderbolts. Laser canons pummel a starship. Weak shields fail as a Star Destroyer bears down.)
