In a lonely field the rain
Lashes an abandoned train;
Outlaws fill the mountain caves.
Fantastic grow the evening gowns;
Agents of the Fisc pursue
Absconding tax-defaulters through
The sewers of provincial towns.
Private rites of magic send
The temple prostitutes to sleep;
All the literati keep
An imaginary friend.
Cerebrotonic Cato may
Extol the Ancient Disciplines,
But the muscle-bound Marines
Mutiny for food and pay.
Caesar's double-bed is warm
As an unimportant clerk
Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK
There’s no point getting hung up on Ancient Disciplines – the nobility of warriors – when the state hasn’t even got the money to pay its real-life soldiers, who are pissed off. 
 We assume that nobody listens to Cato as he drones on about the “Ancient Disciplines” (capitalized ironically) which have ceased to have any bearing on people’s lives. 
 That’s another feature of the poem: all of the lives Auden describes are isolated and disconnected, unbound by any sense of community. Nobody is paying any attention to Cato; the literati are content to talk to themselves; nobody will read the note the clerk writes; the religion the prostitutes practice is private and insular, not shared. Caesar doesn’t even seem to have somebody to sleep with. The only common purpose in the poem is the purpose of bringing down civilization, which is held by both the mutinous soldiers and the stupid chickens. Otherwise, everybody takes what satisfaction they can from their private distractions. 
 it could well refer to the devotion of both Cato and the Marines, and therein the ambiguity this poem develops. Each stanza except the the third and the last two contain some specifically modern element: “train,” “evening gowns,” “Marines,” “pink official form.” There is also a movement from “piers” to “provincial towns” to what we suspect is the heart of the city atop Palatine Hill. Then suddenly there are birds well outside the city, and hordes not stopping to stare at a golden ground.
The Fall of Rome