by Alice Oswald
Stands there being prodded and whacked
Thinking good I will wade and eat sideways
And does just that eats and eats sunk in a pond of corn
Exhausted farm boys beat him with sticks
Their arms ache their sticks break
But nothing moves that big lump of donkey
From the fixed statue of his eating
Until he’s full and of his own iron will
Walks on
And
IASUS
MECISTEUS
ECHIUS
CLONIUS
DEIOCHUS
Like bird families feeding by a river
Hundreds of geese and herons and long-necked swans
When an ember of eagle a red hot coal of hunger
Falls out of the sky and bursts into wings
Like bird families feeding by a river
Hundreds of geese and herons and long-necked swans
When an ember of eagle a red hot coal of hunger
Falls out of the sky and bursts into wings
KALETOR carrying a flaming bit of wood
About to fling it at the ships
He and the fire went out together
And LYKOPHRON
And KLEITOS it goes on and on
His empty cart clattering away through leafless trees
And
SCHEDIOS
LAODAMAS
OTOS
KROISMOS
Like thick flocks of falling snow
In winter when god showers his arrows at us
Pouring them down putting the winds to sleep
Until the hills the headlands the grassy lowlands
All the ploughs and crops of the earth every living twig
Is wiped out white with snow it goes on and on
Falling and falling on the grey sea
Blotting out harbours and beaches
And only the breakers can shake it off endlessly rushing at the shore
That’s how blank it is when the world succumbs to snow
Like thick flocks of falling snow
In winter when god showers his arrows at us
Pouring them down putting the winds to sleep
Until the hills the headlands the grassy lowlands
All the ploughs and crops of the earth every living twig
Is wiped out white with snow it goes on and on
Falling and falling on the grey sea
Blotting out harbours and beaches
And only the breakers can shake it off endlessly rushing at the shore
That’s how blank it is when the world succumbs to snow
DOLOPS the strongest son of Lampus
Not believing he could die
Even when his spear hit solid metal
And banged back again
Even when a man hacked off his helmet
And he saw his own eye-holes
Staring up at him from the ground
It was not until the beak of death
Pushed out through his own chest
That he recognised the wings of darkness
Like when god unwinds his whirlwind
A single cloud moves into the middle sky
MELANIPPUS not really a fighter more a farmer
PERIPHETOS the man from Mycenae
Who tripped on his shield
Like winter rivers pouring off the mountains
The thud of water losing consciousness
When it falls down from the high places
Mixing its streams in the havoc of a valley
And far away a shepherd hears it
Like winter rivers pouring off the mountains
The thud of water losing consciousness
When it falls down from the high places
Mixing its streams in the havoc of a valley
And far away a shepherd hears it
The River Axius has the silverest sweetest water
It flows through Paeonia
Where there are bison in the hills
And men make curved bows from their horns
To get there you have to go miles over mountains
Some of his men might make it
But not PURAICHMES
Like a man running in a dream
Can never approach a man escaping
Who can never escape a man approaching
Like a man running in a dream
Can never approach a man escaping
Who can never escape a man approaching
And
AREILYCUS
THOAS
AMPHICLUS
ATUMNIOS
MARIS
KLEOBULOS
LYKON
AKAMAS
ERYMAS
PRONOOS
THESTOR
ERYLAOS
ERYMAS
AMPHOTERUS
EPALTES
TLEPOLEMOS
ECHIOS
PURIS
IPHES
EUIPPOS
POLYMELOS
THRASYMELOS
Like hawkwings cut through a sheet of starlings
Like wing-scissors open and close
Through a billow of jackdaws
Like hawkwings cut through a sheet of starlings
Like wing-scissors open and close
Through a billow of jackdaws
One side had stables and stone water troughs
They caught a horse in the windy hills
They put it in the king’s paddock
And called it PEDASUS the Leaper
The other side had sacks of white barley
They stole that horse and whipped it into battle
Pedasus with unquestioning eyes
Carried and served both sides
Now the earth is his owner
Like a drop of fig juice squeezed into milk
Mysteriously thickens it
As if a drip of lethargy
Falls into the bucket
And the woman stirring
Stops
Like a drop of fig juice squeezed into milk
Mysteriously thickens it
As if a drip of lethargy
Falls into the bucket
And the woman stirring
Stops
SARPEDON the son of Zeus
Came to this ungreen ungrowing ground
Came from his cornfields from his leafy river
From his kingdom of paths and apple groves
And was killed by a spear
Then for a long time he lay crumpled as linen
Until two soft-voiced servants Sleep and Death
Carried him home again they left him
Folded on the grass and a breeze from heaven
Almost lifted him up almost shook him out
And set him sighing and whispering but no one
Not even a great man not even a son of Zeus
Can buy or steal or borrow back his own last breath
Once he has hissed it out
Through the shutter of his teeth
Like the blue flower of the sea
Being bruised by the wind
Like when the rain-wind
Bullies the warm wind
Battering the great soft sunlit clouds
Deep scoops of wind
Work the sea into a wave
And foam follows wandering gusts
A thousand feet high
Like the blue flower of the sea
Being bruised by the wind
Like when the rain-wind
Bullies the warm wind
Battering the great soft sunlit clouds
Deep scoops of wind
Work the sea into a wave
And foam follows wandering gusts
A thousand feet high
One of the Myrmidons a man of influence
A prince of Budeion he was well-dressed
He was generous and reliable
Until he killed his cousin
Then he became a runaway then a
beggar
Then a soldier then a corpse
A sharp rock struck him
And the understanding drained from his skull
Now he doesn’t recognise himself
He seems paler than EPIGEUS
Like anger which is so rapturous so other
It can turn a man any man into a murderer
Then all his learning is outwitted
He has to leave his home his country
And go begging for shelter
With blood printed on his hands
And wherever he goes
People stare and whisper
Like anger which is so rapturous so other
It can turn a man any man into a murderer
Then all his learning is outwitted
He has to leave his home his country
And go begging for shelter
With blood printed on his hands
And wherever he goes
People stare and whisper
BATHYCLES and LAOGONUS
One a rich man one a priest
Both became earth
In a courtyard on a flat stone
Two children were playing dice
And a quarrel had broken out
Women rushed to the door
They saw one child kill the other
That was PATROCLUS nicknamed Innocent
Who grew up blurred under the background noise
Of his foster-brother’s voice
And borrowed his armour
In the mess of war he forgot his instructions
He kept killing and killing
Until the crack of his spear splintering
And the hush of his helmet spinning through the air
And the rare and immediate light
Of Apollo with one hand
Stopped him
Like moonlight
Or the light of a bonfire
Burning on the cliffs
When sailors get blown along
Homesick over the sea
They notice that far-off fire
And think of their wives
Like moonlight
Or the light of a bonfire
Burning on the cliffs
When sailors get blown along
Homesick over the sea
They notice that far-off fire
And think of their wives
EUPHORBAS died
Leaving his silver hairclip on the battlefield
And HIPPOTHOUS
SCHEDIUS
PHORCYS
LEOCRITUS
Like little campfire stars lit round the moon
No wind at all
Under an upturned glass of air
Exact black rocks show clear
And the world simplifies into cliffs and clefts
On nights like this
Light is unspeakable it is breaking out of heaven
And every star openly admits to god
Making the shepherd glad
Like little campfire stars lit round the moon
No wind at all
Under an upturned glass of air
Exact black rocks show clear
And the world simplifies into cliffs and clefts
On nights like this
Light is unspeakable it is breaking out of heaven
And every star openly admits to god
Making the shepherd glad
APISAON
ARETUS
PODES a close friend of Hector
They used to have meals together
He panicked he tried to run back to those times
But time itself finished him
Like fire which is what
A kind of visible vanishing
That lights up trees
The wind whisks it round
It is nothing it is exhausting
Whole thickets lose their footing and fall
Under the weight of that light
Like fire which is what
A kind of visible vanishing
That lights up trees
The wind whisks it round
It is nothing it is exhausting
Whole thickets lose their footing and fall
Under the weight of that light
And KOIRANUS who came from the bright chalk cliffs
Of Crete he was a quiet man
A light to his loved ones
And IPHITUS who was born in the snow
Between two tumbling trout-stocked rivers
Died on the flat dust
Not far from DEMOLEON and HIPPODAMAS
Like when a dolphin powered by hunger
Swims into the harbour
Thousands of light-storms of little fish
Flit away to the water-shaken wall-shadow
And hang there trembling
Like when a dolphin powered by hunger
Swims into the harbour
Thousands of light-storms of little fish
Flit away to the water-shaken wall-shadow
And hang there trembling
POLYDORUS is dead who loved running
Now somebody has to tell his father
That exhausted man leaning on the wall
Looking for his favourite son
Like a lion leading his cubs through a wood
Walks into a line of huntsmen
And stares himself stronger
Clenching his whole face fistlike
Around the stones of his eyes
Like a lion leading his cubs through a wood
Walks into a line of huntsmen
And stares himself stronger
Clenching his whole face fistlike
Around the stones of his eyes
There lay DRYOPS
Like that dog in the barn
Lying in a darkless half-sleep guarding his sheep
All night there’s a lump of growl stuck in his throat
So the fox tip-toeing through the woods
Worries him awake
Like that dog in the barn
Lying in a darkless half-sleep guarding his sheep
All night there’s a lump of growl stuck in his throat
So the fox tip-toeing through the woods
Worries him awake
And DEMUCHUS
LAOGONUS
DARDANUS
And TROS begging for his life
But his life was over
Like when two animals have found a little luckiness
Of clear-running water in the mountains
One dies and the other drinks it
Like when two animals have found a little luckiness
Of clear-running water in the mountains
One dies and the other drinks it
And MULIUS and RHIGMOS
Like on a long beach the rustle of the sea
Opening its multiple folds unfurling waves
Like on a long beach the rustle of the sea
Opening its multiple folds unfurling waves
Laothoë one of Priam’s wives
Never saw her son again he was washed away
Now she can’t look at the sea she can’t think about
The bits unburied being eaten by fishes
He was the tall one the conscientious one
Who stayed out late pruning his father’s fig trees
Who was kidnapped who was ransomed
Who walked home barefoot from Arisbe
And rested for twelve days and was killed
LYCAON killed Lycaon unkilled Lycaon
Bending down branches to make wheels
Lycaon kidnapped Lycaon pruning by moonlight
Lycaon naked in a river pleading for his life
Being answered by Achilles No
Like when a lion comes back to a forest’s secret rooms
Too late
The hunter has taken her children
She follows the tracks of that man
Into every valley
With her heart’s darkness
Growing dark
er
Like when a lion comes back to a forest’s secret rooms
Too late
The hunter has taken her children
She follows the tracks of that man
Into every valley
With her heart’s darkness
Growing darker
Near the old fig tree the cart track
That runs downhill from windy Troy
Passes two springs where the Scamander
Bubbles over stones the first one warm
The second one ice cold even in summer
Town people come and wash their clothes
In those smooth rock-scooped pools
The river knows their voices
But Achilles killed so many men
Standing downstream with his rude sword
Hacking off heads until the water
Burst out in anger lifting up a ridge of waves
That now this whole river is a grave
Women at the washing pools
When they hear the river running
Crying like a human through its chambers
They remember THERSILOCHUS lying
In a quick-moving never-ending darkness
Between steep steps of echoing rocks
They remember MYDON that frightened face
Falling out of sight under the tamarisks
And ASTYPYLOS blocking the channel
MNESIUS rolled in sand THRASIUS lost in silt
AINIOS turning somersaults in a black pool
Upside down among the licking fishes
And OPHELESTES his last breath silvering the surface
All that beautiful armour underwater
All those white bones sunk in mud
And instead of a burial a wagtail
Sipping the desecration unaware
Like when a man dives off a boat
Into wind-blackened water
He vanishes then surfaces
With his thoughts the other way up
And his hands full of oysters
Like when a man dives off a boat
Into wind-blackened water
He vanishes then surfaces
With his thoughts the other way up
And his hands full of oysters
And HECTOR died like everyone else
He was in charge of the Trojans
But a spear found out the little patch of white
Between his collarbone and his throat
Just exactly where a man’s soul sits
Waiting for the mouth to open
He always knew it would happen
He who was so boastful and anxious
And used to nip home deafened by weapons
To stand in full armour in the doorway
Like a man rushing in leaving his motorbike running
All women loved him
His wife was Andromache
One day he looked at her quietly
He said I know what will happen
And an image stared at him of himself dead
And her in Argos weaving for some foreign woman
He blinked and went back to his work
Hector loved Andromache
But in the end he let her face slide from his mind
He came back to her sightless
