cries.
I lock the factories, ban mass
gatherings, building projects and roadwork,
any hobbies that require scissors, shears, knitting needles, cheers,
chopping blocks, drums or power saws. It’s not enough.
I staple streets with rows of egg cartons. I close
the airports, sabotage wind farms, lobby
for cotton wool to be installed on every coast. No luck.
I build a six-metre-wide horn-shaped antenna, climb
the gantry to the control tower, and listen in.
I pick up eras of news reports, Motown, Vera Lynn,
Hockey
Night in Canada
, attempt to eliminate all interference,
pulsing heat or cooing pigeons, and yet there it is:
that bass, uniform, residual hum from all directions,
no single radio source but a resonance left over
from the beginning of the universe. Does it mean
I’m getting closer or further away? It helps to know
whether we’re particle, wave or string, if time
and distance expand or circle, which is why
I need to learn to listen, even while I’m listening.
Socrates at Delium
What do I know? At least these
last two mornings since the Boeotian
ranks massed. The whole lot of us
had been camped inside their border, sea
at our backs. We thought we’d soon
be home in Athens. A set of cooking fires
still smoked behind the earthworks, evidence
of a hurried defence at the temple we’d occupied,
an obvious insult. The old seer took
the ram and made a lattice of its throat,
our counter-prayer
for the terror we hoped to inspire.
Across the dawn fields, the enemy trod
through the stripped orchards and wheat,
farmers like us, setting out cold in linen
and cloaks, the well-to-do armoured
for glory out front. After weeks of marching,
the suddenness of it: the general’s shouts,
his interrupted speech passed down the lines,
our pipe marking the pace, and far off,
their war cry rending the November air
like a thousand sickles. The black doors
of each empty farmhouse watched our lines
clatter through stubbled stalks,
my arm already heavy from the shield.
‘Stay tight, stay tight,’ we called across
the bronze rims, cursing and half out of breath.
Then a new shout went out
and we spilled up the ridge at a run
into the Thebans’ spear thrusts.
In the push, there’s little room for a view;
dust scuffed up by thousands of men
gagged the air. Best to trust in detail,
watch for sharp jabs at your throat,
stay flush with the column, and above all else
don’t fall. Not so easy with the friendly shields
pressing behind, and reaped furrows
snatching your balance. Our phalanx
held, shoving, and forced the Thebans
back over ground they’d claimed at midday.
But there was a too-easy feel to it,
as if we expected they’d break, and we’d slide
through their lines like lava from Hades.
Word spread of horsemen on the hill.
A trick? Who knew? We were servants
to rumour. A few turned and ran,
then the rest. Then I did too.
‘Don’t show them your backs,’ I cried
to a group, shopkeepers from the look
of them. ‘Do you want wounds
there
when your corpse is exchanged?’
That turned them around.
We still had our swords. Scavenging cracked
spear-lengths to keep the cavalry off,
we backpedalled over corpses, boulders
and olive roots into dusk. That was two days ago.
More rumours follow us to Attica: Hippocrates
dead, how we were outnumbered,
whispers of the slaughter chittering in our ears
like broken cart wheels. Though we know the direction
home, we stall, not from plague that still strays
in its streets, but the shame of retreat.
Night, the cooking fires again.
We who are left, battered stragglers, scoop gruel
and wait for orders to seek out our dead.
Now, on the edge of the firelight, a rhapsode
recites an ancient passage, his voice recalling Troy,
the dark-beaked ships and grief for Patroclus.
We were brave enough, but couldn’t hold.
What use is a story or a song?
The Afterlives of Hans and Sophie Scholl
‘Allen Gewalten zum Trotz sich
I lock the factories, ban mass
gatherings, building projects and roadwork,
any hobbies that require scissors, shears, knitting needles, cheers,
chopping blocks, drums or power saws. It’s not enough.
I staple streets with rows of egg cartons. I close
the airports, sabotage wind farms, lobby
for cotton wool to be installed on every coast. No luck.
I build a six-metre-wide horn-shaped antenna, climb
the gantry to the control tower, and listen in.
I pick up eras of news reports, Motown, Vera Lynn,
Hockey
Night in Canada
, attempt to eliminate all interference,
pulsing heat or cooing pigeons, and yet there it is:
that bass, uniform, residual hum from all directions,
no single radio source but a resonance left over
from the beginning of the universe. Does it mean
I’m getting closer or further away? It helps to know
whether we’re particle, wave or string, if time
and distance expand or circle, which is why
I need to learn to listen, even while I’m listening.
Socrates at Delium
What do I know? At least these
last two mornings since the Boeotian
ranks massed. The whole lot of us
had been camped inside their border, sea
at our backs. We thought we’d soon
be home in Athens. A set of cooking fires
still smoked behind the earthworks, evidence
of a hurried defence at the temple we’d occupied,
an obvious insult. The old seer took
the ram and made a lattice of its throat,
our counter-prayer
for the terror we hoped to inspire.
Across the dawn fields, the enemy trod
through the stripped orchards and wheat,
farmers like us, setting out cold in linen
and cloaks, the well-to-do armoured
for glory out front. After weeks of marching,
the suddenness of it: the general’s shouts,
his interrupted speech passed down the lines,
our pipe marking the pace, and far off,
their war cry rending the November air
like a thousand sickles. The black doors
of each empty farmhouse watched our lines
clatter through stubbled stalks,
my arm already heavy from the shield.
‘Stay tight, stay tight,’ we called across
the bronze rims, cursing and half out of breath.
Then a new shout went out
and we spilled up the ridge at a run
into the Thebans’ spear thrusts.
In the push, there’s little room for a view;
dust scuffed up by thousands of men
gagged the air. Best to trust in detail,
watch for sharp jabs at your throat,
stay flush with the column, and above all else
don’t fall. Not so easy with the friendly shields
pressing behind, and reaped furrows
snatching your balance. Our phalanx
held, shoving, and forced the Thebans
back over ground they’d claimed at midday.
But there was a too-easy feel to it,
as if we expected they’d break, and we’d slide
through their lines like lava from Hades.
Word spread of horsemen on the hill.
A trick? Who knew? We were servants
to rumour. A few turned and ran,
then the rest. Then I did too.
‘Don’t show them your backs,’ I cried
to a group, shopkeepers from the look
of them. ‘Do you want wounds
there
when your corpse is exchanged?’
That turned them around.
We still had our swords. Scavenging cracked
spear-lengths to keep the cavalry off,
we backpedalled over corpses, boulders
and olive roots into dusk. That was two days ago.
More rumours follow us to Attica: Hippocrates
dead, how we were outnumbered,
whispers of the slaughter chittering in our ears
like broken cart wheels. Though we know the direction
home, we stall, not from plague that still strays
in its streets, but the shame of retreat.
Night, the cooking fires again.
We who are left, battered stragglers, scoop gruel
and wait for orders to seek out our dead.
Now, on the edge of the firelight, a rhapsode
recites an ancient passage, his voice recalling Troy,
the dark-beaked ships and grief for Patroclus.
We were brave enough, but couldn’t hold.
What use is a story or a song?
The Afterlives of Hans and Sophie Scholl
‘Allen Gewalten zum Trotz sich
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