Monday, May 26, 2014

From Alice Oswald’s MEMORIAL: A Version of Homer’s Iliad


























The first to die was PROTESILAUS
A focused man who hurried to darkness
With forty black ships leaving the land behind
Men sailed with him from those flower-lit cliffs
Where the grass gives growth to everything
Pyrasus   Iton   Pteleus   Antron
He died in mid-air jumping to be first ashore
There was his house half-built
His wife rushed out clawing her face
Podarcus his altogether less impressive brother
Took over command but that was long ago
He’s been in the black earth now for thousands of years

Like a wind-murmur
Begins a rumour of waves
One long note getting louder
The water breathes a deep sigh
Like a land-ripple
When the west wind runs through a field
Wishing and searching
Nothing to be found
The corn-stalks shake their green heads


The first to die from New York State was Petty Officer
3rd Class Benjamin Johnson
Twenty-one of Rochester
Drowned in the Persian Gulf
When the ship they boarded
Which had been smuggling Iraqi oil sank
Michael J. Jakes   Scott N. Germosen   Peter Tycz
And more since 2001 some 297
And more nearly 7,000 women and men



Like a wind-murmur
Begins a rumour of waves
One long note getting louder
The water breathes a deep sigh
Like a land-ripple
When the west wind runs through a field
Wishing and searching
Nothing to be found
The corn-stalks shake their green heads


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