On this bonus episode of the Key, we have a very off-the-cuff, very free-ranging discussion of Auden’s short poem “The Fall of Rome,” which you can listen to the man himself reading in his great, mid-century baritone here. (Or you can listen to us read it in our nasally, 21st century rasp to start the episode, but it is not as impressive). What is the fall of Rome, as Auden chronicles it? Something that actually happened in history? Something that is happening to the West now? Or something that is always happening – some part of civilization falling away, as another rises?