Homer: War Music (by Christopher Logue)
Homer: War Music (by Christopher Logue)
Original Text
Christopher Logue, War Music: An Account of Books 1-4 and 16-19 of Homer's Iliad (London: Faber & Faber, 2001). This poem is reproduced on the Griffin Prize Web Site (from a volume on the 2002 International Shortlist).
1Picture the east Aegean sea by night,
2And on a beach aslant its shimmering
3Upwards of 50,000 men
4Asleep like spoons beside their lethal Fleet.
5 Now look along that beach, and see
6Between the keels hatching its western dunes
7A ten-foot-high reed wall faced with black clay
8Split by a double-doored gate;
9Then through the gate a naked man
10Run with what seems to break the speed of light
11Across the dry, then damp, then sand invisible
12Beneath inch-high waves that slide
13Over each other’s luminescent panes;
14Then kneel among those panes, burst into tears, and say:
15 ’Mother,
16You said that you and God were friends.
17Over and over when you were at home
18You said it. Friends. Good friends. That was your boast.
19You had had me, your child, your only child
20To save Him from immortal death. In turn,
21You friend, the Lord our God, gave you His word,
22Mother, His word: If I, your only child
23Chose to die young, by violence, far from home,
24My standing would be first; be best;
25The best of bests; here; and in perpetuity.
26And so I chose. Nor have I changed. But now--
27By which I mean today, this instant, now--
28That Shepherd of the Clouds has seen me trashed
29Surely as if He sent a hand to shoo
30The army into one, and then, before its eyes,
31Painted my body with fresh Trojan excrement.’
32 Sometimes
33Before the gods appear
34Something is marked:
35 A noise. A note, perhaps. Perhaps
36A change of temperature. Or else, as now,
37The scent of oceanic lavender,
38That even as it drew his mind
39Drew from the seal-coloured sea onto the beach
40A mist that moved like weed, then stood, then turned
41Into his mother, Thetis’, mother lovelost face,
42Her fingers, next, that lift his chin, that push
43His long, redcurrant-coloured hair
44Back from his face, her voice, her words:
45 ’Why tears, Achilles?
46Rest in my arms and answer from your heart.’
47 The sea is quiet as light.
48 ’Three weeks ago,’ he said, ‘while raiding southern Ilium
49I killed the men and burned a town called Tollo,
50Whose yield comprised a wing of Hittite chariots
51And 30 fertile shes.
52 As is required
53The latter reached the beach-head unassigned,
54Were sorted by the herald’s staff, and then
55Soon after sunrise on the following day
56Led to the common sand for distribution.
57 At which point, mother mine’--his tears have gone--
58‘Enter the King. No-no. Our King of kings, Majestic Agamemnon,
59His nose extruded from his lionshead cowl,
60Its silvered claws clasped so’--arms over chest--
61‘And sloping up his shoulder, thus, the mace,
62The solar mace, that stands for--so I thought--
63What Greeks require of Greeks:
64 To worship God; to cherish honour;
65To fight courageously, keeping your own,
66And so the status of your fellow lords
67High, mother, high--as he knows well--as he knew well--
68As he came lick-lick when the best
69Met to view the shes--six with infant boys at heel--
70Here sniffing, pinching here, lifting a lip, a lid,
71Asking his brother: “One, Menelaos, or … or two?”
72 Then, having scanned their anxious faces with his own,
73The guardian of our people outs the mace
74As if it were a mop, and with its gold
75Egg-ended butt, selects--before the owed--
76A gently broken adolescent she
77Who came--it seemed--from plain but prosperous ground.’
78 ’First King, first fruit,’ his mother said.
79 ’Will you hear more, or not?’ he said.
80 ’Dear child …’
81 ’Then do not interrupt.’
82 The stars look down.
83Troy is a glow behind the dunes.
84The camp is dark.
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2011