Had Menelaus satisfied the wife
who'd chosen him from all the lords of Greece,
his generation might have skipped the strife,
and frittered lives away in boring peace.
Had Paris died, or--better--not been born,
catastrophe need not have smitten Troy.
The Spartan King would not have earned those horns
from some perfidious young sailor boy.
Had Agamemnon been less insecure,
Achilles would have kept his trophy girl.
They'd be forgotten; nothing would endure
to edify the Hellenistic world.
But stars aligned, and Homer found his theme:
the Western Canon's oldest fever-dream.
Immortal Thetis can't have aged a day
since Peleus first claimed her for his bed.
Her first-born's flesh had mouldered into clay,
before she would concede that he lay dead.
Mortality's a "gift" in Tolkien's eyes
to never weary of the tolling years.
A sacred thing, to love what has to die;
to season feasts of pleasure with hot tears.
The immortality Achilles won
was not the sort a mother'd hoped to share.
His glory glows as long as songs are sung,
but she prefers he'd left one heir, one Spare.
Fleet-footed sea-nymph brooding in her fjord
know all too much of mortals, and their wars.
Sing, Goddess of the man-destroying wrath
Peleides unloaded on his liege.
'Though Aphrodite'd set them on this path,
Her brother Ares revels in this siege.
When Agamemnon seized his better's girl
he gave offense, no less than Priam's son.
For Homer's audience, in Homer's world,
one had to know what simply isn't done.
Exquisite Helen only dimly grasps
the carnage men inflicted in her name.
Whole worlds pre-empted for a piece of ass,
while paltry few won literary fame.
Penelope's the only worthy prize;
the poet's insight's clear, despite blind eyes.
"That woman" Sarah snarled "has got to go!"
and Avraham's bewildered at the switch.
As he'd been told to do, he'd done just so.
No man alive could satisfy this bitch.
God rolled the eyes he hasn't strictly got
commiserating with his favorite Jew.
"It's pointless talking while her wrath burns hot
for now, just as she says, you'd better do".
One final test before his trial's done
if one so elevated might rise higher.
Please lay your only one beloved son
to elevate on an impromptu pyre.
Each year, we struggle somehow sense to make
of this pericope, that's still opaque.
King William died in awkward circumstance;
his squires despoiled the corpse of any worth.
No coffin could be found in all of France,
to fit the English monarch's regal girth.
Enteric fauna took their tranche as well
before a fitting box was found, at last.
Beyond the limit human guts can swell,
He quit this world with one foul putrid blast.
Poor Hector, uncorrupted, lay in state
'til Priam tucked him in, atop his pyre.
But French bacteria disdain to wait;
recycling nutrients, as sure as fire.
These Windsors don't rely on Normans' claims,
but have a thing for inauspicious names
Taveras flipped; obstruction's now overt;
destroying evidence is not okay.
Surveillance tapes, and electronic dirt,
persist when paper traces flush away.
Like Butterfield, it's IT workers know
where evidence of what's went down lies hid.
Those Oval Office tapes of long ago
Attest what Richard Nixon said, and did.
Conspirators must walk, or hang, as one;
game-theorists taught this much about crime.
One member breaks, the whole cabal is done;
the last to sing, will serve the hardest time.
I don't remember who it was who said:
that "two can keep a secret--if one's dead"
Fleet Hermes laughed at Ares, snared by Love.
For now, the latter's spear seems safely sheathed.
Suspended from the brazen springe above,
while Aphrodite cursed and writhed beneath.
The cuckold's not as sanguine at their plight
he'd hoped to come up empty with this net.
Consorting with the Cypriote one night
no god nor mortal's likely to forget.
Loud Menelaos dared, 'though he'd been warned
to wed the fairest maiden in all Greece.
Predictably, his brow's adorned with horns,
his generation's not cut out for peace.
The Western canon's grandest epic text
makes no pretense that war's not twin to sex.
