Poem draft, probably not finished
Yes, this is about Achilles and Patroclus.
Asphodel
Do the dead remember?
Impossible, he thought, to forget
The intensity of such love,
To look without recognition
On that dear other face
Within whose shadows he had defined
The shape of his essential being.
The wish is always for some sign of permanence,
To say, “Although all things must cease and pass away,
This one true thing remains, when I do not.”
The hero’s tomb may stand long after his name
Has vanished into oblivion, signifying a glory
That withered despite the singer’s promise.
But the self that loved is gone.
Ash poured into ashes, mingling as bodies once mingled
Warm and alive under the sky, now they sleep
Forever in the dark, inseparable.
But cold dust cannot be comforted.
It is no longer of any consequence to it where it lies.
He swore that he would not forget.
But eternity is inexorable, and he went
Down into silence like all the rest,
Into that place of forgetting.
Years later, a man wandering lost
Through the lands of death found
Two shadows standing beside each other
On the fields of asphodel.
No, they do not remember.
They do not embrace. They do not know
Why they are together here, with petals
Falling around their quiet feet.
And yet, here they remain.
There are stronger gods than Memory.
Inspired by Iliad 22.387-389 and Book 11 of the Odyssey.
Asphodel
Do the dead remember?
Impossible, he thought, to forget
The intensity of such love,
To look without recognition
On that dear other face
Within whose shadows he had defined
The shape of his essential being.
The wish is always for some sign of permanence,
To say, “Although all things must cease and pass away,
This one true thing remains, when I do not.”
The hero’s tomb may stand long after his name
Has vanished into oblivion, signifying a glory
That withered despite the singer’s promise.
But the self that loved is gone.
Ash poured into ashes, mingling as bodies once mingled
Warm and alive under the sky, now they sleep
Forever in the dark, inseparable.
But cold dust cannot be comforted.
It is no longer of any consequence to it where it lies.
He swore that he would not forget.
But eternity is inexorable, and he went
Down into silence like all the rest,
Into that place of forgetting.
Years later, a man wandering lost
Through the lands of death found
Two shadows standing beside each other
On the fields of asphodel.
No, they do not remember.
They do not embrace. They do not know
Why they are together here, with petals
Falling around their quiet feet.
And yet, here they remain.
There are stronger gods than Memory.
Inspired by Iliad 22.387-389 and Book 11 of the Odyssey.