“And soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds”
Elon Musk
There has been much reflection on the disappearance of the Twitter bird, ‘Larry T Bird’*, towards which Elon Musk has always expressed ill-concealed distrust. It is the beginning of a new era, the era of the ‘X’.
What actually is to be underlined here, however, is that no one has yet recognized the bird, albeit virtual, a worthy epicedium, in the same way as the one Catullus dedicated to the sparrow of Lesbia in Carme III:
Lugete, Veneres Cupidinesque**
et omnes vos viri benigni.
Passer mortuus est retis socialis,
passer, cuius canto comes fuit nostro;
erat enim dulce sicut mel et constituit eum
bonum, ab omnibus rivalis distans
nec unquam a suo termino dimovetur
ducentis octoginta characteribus nunquam amplius.
"Perge nunc iter opaca
in quo negant quemquam unquam venisse."**
Atque una X suo loco apparet, qui iucunda explicationes praeco dicitur.
Maledicta eris saevae tenebrae
inferi qui omnia bella devorant
an ita te opportunum reddit tempora mutans?
Quis hoc narret?
Unus qui in posterum vivet!
Nunc, Larry T Bird, fortassis pipias in Averno
et rubeant oculi lacrymis turgidi quidam.
*named ‘Larry T Bird’ by the Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, in honor of the former Boston Celtics basketball player Larry Bird.
** as it is in Catullus
