......... The Shield of Achilles ........
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…….She looked over his shoulderA plain without a feature, bare and brown,
……….For vines and olive trees,
…….Marble well-governed cities
……….And ships upon untamed seas,
…….But there on the shining metal
……….His hands had put instead
…….An artificial wilderness
……….And a sky like lead.
…No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood,
Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down,
…Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood
…An unintelligible multitude,
A million eyes, a million boots in line,
Without expression, waiting for a sign.
Out of the air a voice without a face
…Proved by statistics that some cause was just
In tones as dry and level as the place:
…No one was cheered and nothing was discussed;
…Column by column in a cloud of dust
They marched away enduring a belief
Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief.
.......She looked over his shoulderBarbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot
..........For ritual pieties,
.......White flower-garlanded heifers,
..........Libation and sacrifice,
.......But there on the shining metal
..........Where the alter should have been,
.......She saw by his flickering forge-light
..........Quite another scene.
…Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke)
And sentries sweated for the day was hot:
…A crowd of ordinary decent folk
…Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke
As three pale figures were led forth and bound
To three posts driven upright in the ground.
The mass and majesty of this world, all
…That carries weight and always weighs the same
Lay in the hands of others; they were small
…And could not hope for help and so no help came:
…What their foes liked to do was done, their shame
Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride
And died as men before their bodies died.
.......She looked over his shoulderA ragged urchin, aimless and alone,
..........For athletes at their games,
.......Men and women in a dance
..........Moving their sweet limbs
.......Quick, quick, to music,
..........But there on the shining shield
.......His hands had set no dancing floor
..........But a weed-choked field.
…Loitered about that vacancy; a bird
Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone:
…That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,
…Were axioms to him, who'd never heard
Of any world where promises were kept,
Or one could weep because another wept.
.......The thin-lipped armorer,
..........Hephaestos, hobbled away,
.......Thetis of the shining breasts
..........Cried out in dismay
.......At what the god had wrought
..........To please her son, the strong
.......Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles
..........Who would not live long.
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