And then after that sort of stuff
I often go back to writing poems about Greek and Roman empires
because the United States is in an imperial position.
Often we go off fighting imperial wars
to make new world order just the way
Greece and Rome did and look what happened to them you know.
So here's a couple of poems from ancient times.
Greek first.
Part of my own memories of World War Two.
It's called "Stentor and Mourning."
"Sunday was calm and airy but artillery over the hill
made us too nervous to like it.
Some private tacked his tin mirror to a palm tree
and shaved using his helmet for a bowl that would not
hold much water Monday night.
I wondered, stretched out in the wild
in the sleepy diarrhea of fear why soldiers fear remarks more
than a probable mutilation and swore myself some day
after the important war to a rule of disobedience
as the bravest way.
Nevertheless, the captain's football voice,
bully as acne and athlete's foot,
commands as public law, Prussian as gossip
or the discipline of smiles.
Just like when Hera the goddess rallied the Greeks
as they cried by their ships, she
yelled from Stentor's mouth, and they fought again,
not for Helen and souvenirs or even the gods' graces,
but for Greek good opinion.
Now, after survivor's Friday in the short weekend of peace,
I hear that why we fight is for our buddy's safety
or for vengeance for his death.
But I hold that most of us nurture a fear
in secret by and large about our state's power.
Some of us unknown in arms can be Patroclus in his onrush
or Achilles in his sulk against the private feet
of doing as we goddamn please.
Or charge a public hill to an approved early death
under the national eagle."