Tuesday 24 June 2014

another one in the Odysseus series

Differences between Achilles and myself

2


It is said Achilles screamed like a stuck pig
that moment the arrow went in
but I was there and can attest to no such thing.
He stopped in midstride, his eyes
looked down to where the arrow jutted,
like a lizard’s  elongated tongue,
from out of his ankle — that ankle his mother held
So many years ago and yet surely not enough
then he looked at me and I swear
by the memory of my own mother’s arms around me
he simply gave a weary shrug before he fell
both in body and in spirit;
a death so beyond me
that I know I might travel a million million battlefields
and never see its like again

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