Two Poems About Greeks
These two poems have a number of similarities: both take as their subject characters heroes of the Trojan war (Odysseus in the first, Achilles in the second); both were written in a single night (the Odysseus poem tonight, the Achilles poem some time last year); both follow unreasonably constraining rhyme-schemes; both contain dick jokes. Please enjoy.
Odysseus Recalls the Song of the Sirens
With ears unwaxed upon the shore they listen to the churning swell and cheeping of the pipistrelle and whistling of their Captain, for he whistles songs exceeding well and can recall the Sirens’ air, which with his crew he means to share – but blows a trifling bagatelle. He cannot now while standing there recall the quaking of the heart (or stirring of that other part), but only that it quaked as ne’er it ever had, when they did start (while he, bound to the mizzenmast, had hoped the moment was his last) to work their deadly crooning art, which such a potent spell had cast upon his limbs and boiling brain that straight into the roiling main he’d thrown himself – but ropes held fast. That madness now he can’t explain; that beauty which had made him yearn Penelope and life to spurn; he felt himself come cursèd sane. No desire in his heart did burn, and overcome by awful calm he felt no reason for alarm, but wished he wished he might return.
A Eunuch Slave in Conversation with Achilles
Complain you of a wounded heel? I’ll show a wound to whine about. You have no one to blame but yourself: you refused to sow, took brazen spear to Troy, are now undone by Paris’ arrow-point. A hearth, a home, a wife, two children: a daughter, a son – all these you might have had, but chose to roam upon the bloody fields of war. Your feet, whose sandals trod upon the carnal foam, might well have better trod on narrow streets of little towns in Greece, a family at your heels. Look upon this gut of meat, this balding pate, this sallow skin, and see your life had your other spear been surrendered. A sweeter world, had you not sought for glories; and sweeter still, had I not been ungendered. Have your immortality, Achilles, for castrates, too, would wish to be remembered.