More Verse...
Concerning a Minor Incident in The Illiad
Then a huge-eared wombat
Fluttered down and stole a mango:
And Tros felt suddenly glad again,
As he knew he should feel glad,
Tomorrow being his first day
Outside the walls. He fell
Asleep in the grove there,
Among coiled, colored snails
Like lidless eyes waiting
For a world.
Tros woke up feeling fine
And fresh. He had slept in
His equipment, all damp-dark
With olive oil. He was glad
He had chosen this.
He went to the rampart,
Saw aghast the battle underway
Without him. He rattled
Down, unlatched, shoved
Open the gate, and out
To the blinding distances.
Ahead, he saw Achilles
In black leather glinting
Like bronze chrome, tear
Open five of the old heroes
Tros had worshipped since
A younger boy: and now Achilles,
Panting meat-faced rushed
Up to him, and, weighed down
By some animal dark behind
His groin, Tros fell to his knees
To plead like a mother
For his youth, as mealy
Vomit jerked from his nose.
The Dark Ships
King Harold takes an arrow in
To his eye, gives cry and then
Staggers off, no more a king
Than you nor I nor anything.
Thrown open to the only source
By willful art and loveless force,
Central throb more itch than itch,
Falls into a gory ditch.
No more now his mother's child,
He suffers in the sudden field.
No tapestry of killing men
Unrolls before his vision then;
Pregnant with an iron heart,
He seems to see-- and gives a start.
Then falls back and stag-like dies,
With two unequally open eyes.
What he saw was not revealed
To any who that day were healed.
What he saw shall never pass
From where it hides beneath the grass.
What he saw cannot be found
Though you creep up with no sound.
Long dark ships are moving slow
Upon the line of what we know.
The Age of Fable
From the village below the castle,
The serfs can see the knights
Cavorting with pale ladies;
They can smell the delicate muttons,
They can feel the blatant unfairness:
And what the priest tells them
Doesn't really help.
As for the Revolution,
It's at least five hundred years away.
And so they make up stories.
In one, they're strong with rage.
An axe is in their hand. They go
Up to the castle and rape and kill
Everything that breathes.
Then they sit down at the great table
And stuff themselves.
They lay a tax upon the village.
The prettiest boys and girls
Are brought to their bed.
They sleep in. They kill off
Anyone who seems ambitious.
All the serfs in the village know this story,
Though not one has ever told it.
Regeneration Primer
A.
That scenic view: it jumps into
you, like a suicidal valley.
Through skies as purple as jelly
fish eyes, five thousand soldiers
float, all going down the throat
of Dien Bien Phu.
Your Colonel has gleams of mustache
sweat streaking down
his neck. His map
is like a comic book, like flowers
named from above (we'll see how much
they love him, once he's on the ground).
In the baroque shade
of its own exhaust
lives every twist of fire
its solitary light: it is night.
Reinforcements are in. You wait
for Glory to begin.
Frog-gullets thump, ping. Rain
sweeps over, over
everything. You watch the hills,
swaying like green fire. You drink a toast
to renascent empire. Near
cannon snail down a mountain trail.
B.
O the day's face was pale, when
death began. It opened
its mouth and out the blood
ran like a roar of silk. Wives tore
awake, far
off in the flashlit weapon dark.
When too many to tell
fell from hills, some in the fort just put
out their thumbs to the wave,
were taken.
Others turned into bacon:
fatty fried meat and its crumbs.
C.
Blackness lay on the fields,
the blackness of a crow
against a ghost of snow.
A new tree was planted in the mound
of the imperial fete. They watered it
with mustache sweat.
The Spanish Civil Servants
With the languor of men allied
to the state, they rubber-
stamp documents In
the Name of the Nation, we hereby
proclaim, paw away flies
and kick back their chairs to look
up at the overhead fan.
The Horrors of the Century
stopped here, once, and then moved on:
now there's only felicity,
a stagnation. They feed it lies,
then lie by entering the truth
in a book, and go out, past
the bunch-chinned photo and jack-
booted guards into tall
streets, through markets of lush
orbs and red medicines
to the houses of pussy and perfume,
where, like regents of a minor
colony, they administer gently
to this flower, the World:
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