It speaks (of ) wisdom, if a beginning must already have been made, to make an ironic start:

Even though it’s abysmal, the poet begins with laughter. And the beginning is all the easier, since the spirit of storytelling has already anticipated it. What does it need the poet for? – The bells are already ringing. In the midst of what has happened, a beginning, then, has already been made. Again and again, a conditional beginning, certainly. But the historian, the poet, find nothing else in the past. And politicians are grateful: even beginnings such as these – Ab urbe condita (Livy) or usque ad urbem conditam (Virgil) – are primal events where memory ‘may find national reassurance … and come to historical and personal rest’.