May 11, 2023
Poems by Bryan Narendorf
Book 2 of The Iliad: The Catalogue of Ships
The south midlanders want
whos and wherefroms. Damn your
contract. Damn commanders
dead or left behind in
the ninth year of the war,
the ships beached in the east.
Damn the king’s brother who
leaves his wife thinking guest
law holds when the gods get
involved. Damn Odysseus
and Diomedes night
raiding. Damn Rhesos and
his horses. Damn skulking
Dolon. Damn the fleetfoot
godlike Achilles, his
inhumanly heavy
spear, his armors, his sulks
and grieve, his humanmaking
loss. Damn his belovèd.
Damn Priam, his city,
his damned son whose great heart
knows how this must end.
Damn your setlist. Call on
Thea to pour a fresh
cup because you’ll sing their
song at Sunday service,
because you want a tip,
a curtain call and encore, to be
invited back, because
you’ll try out a couple
of lines you’ve woodshopped
on the road between gigs,
because the prologue’s here
and not down south, not on
Ida with Paris and
the Queens of Heaven, not
with the apple for the fairest of them all.
It’s here with the assembled
fleet becalmed at Aulis,
the war held up for Lady
Iphianassa
to be called forth and
slaughtered so the ships sail
and each death that follows
a paying down that debt,
this disposition of ships
and men a ledge
it’ll take years to balance.
Book 10 of The Iliad: The Team of Rhesos
Action bracketed by horses
comes down not to horses
but the idea of horses
a dream of impossible horses
the gods could give any one
of us easily alone
or a team one
highhearted godlike
willful the other pulling like
a tractor through loam like
Achilles’s horses but biddable like
a dove in hand
Taking reins in hand
these horses the gods hand
over we could imagine better
stronger a team better
yoked to our will better piling on better
beyond anything except better
still until horses-in-the-flesh must disappear
into Diomedes’ camp out of ear-
shot and never in the poem reappear
Having failed to persuade Achilles to reenter the war, the Achaeans send Odysseus and Diomedes to reconnoiter the Trojans camped on the plains between Ilion and the Panachaea fleet. They encounter a Trojan spy, Dolon, whom they interrogate and murder, and then slaughter the sleeping Thracians, who’ve just arrived at the front. Diomedes takes King Rhesos’ chariot team as booty but leaves his famous golden armor.
Interlude: The Poem is a Cynical Exchange
Fame the heroes
croak (even Achilles who cloaks
it in wrath and bereave),
the song itself that raison,
the singer throwing his voice for wine
sent down from the high
table, a Booker
Prize, or the off- chance a bit
lodges somewhere
like a chip of glass
in wet mortar. No tale
teller is immune.
Book 23 of The Iliad
After the dogs
and horses, at the bier of his
belovèd friend,
in whose hand he
has put a lock of hair (himself
promissoried)
Achilles cuts
the throats of twelve Trojan boys, aides
; de camp, drivers,
pages, the law
of arms befucked. Homer tut tuts.
No one else says
shit.