The Pluperfect Tense

Old New England school men come to Texas,
Dressing for dinner like Brits in India:
We wondered why Tom Perdue had called his wife
The pluperfect tense.
A Latinist, too, he cared about things
People don’t think of these days:
Pronouns agreeing with antecedents,
The voice and mood of verbs but not of persons,
The way sand blows over footprints.
She had smiled sadly, as I recall.
Rereading Vergil,
It came to me:
The completed act, prior to past time,
The sense of finality apprehended:
Sunt lacrimae rerum.