“O shining Odysseus, never try to console me for dying. I would rather follow the plow as thrall to another man, one with no land allotted him and not much to live on, than be a king over all the perished dead.”
— Homer, Odyssey XI.488–491 (trans. Richmond Lattimore)
Prelude: The Calling Across the Void
Hear me, O boundless halls of shadow,
where the voices of the upper world drift down like falling leaves,
carrying my name—
yet here, in this silence deeper than death’s first breath,
I am but shade calling to shade across the voiceless deep.
Not as I was in life do I summon you, O dwellers in darkness,
but as one among the countless dead who wander here,
seeking not the glory that the living world still sings,
but what no song can restore, no fame redeem.
By Acheron’s dark waters, by Cocytus’ wailing stream,
come forth from asphodel’s pale meadows,
enter not Lethe’s merciful waters—
let me embrace again what I have lost,
not the glory I have won.
The Encounter with Odysseus
Through the mists of the unremembering came Odysseus of many turns,
his words still honey-bright, his tongue still silver-edged:
“Achilles, no shade walks more blessed than you among the dead!
In life, you were honored as a god among mortals;
here, you are lord of the departed.
Above, the poets crown you with undying flame—
your name will never perish from the lips of men.”
But I answered him, bitter with the dust of ages:
“Do not gild my shadow, son of Laertes.
Better to be a hireling alive, a drudge to some poor man
who scratches bread from stubborn earth,
than king among these silent multitudes.
Your songs reach my name but cannot touch my soul;
they raise me to eternity yet leave me hollow
as wind through bone.”
The Shade of Patroclus
Then—O mercy of the pitiless dark—
I thought I heard you, Patroclus,
soft as breath through withered leaves,
faint as the last note of a dying lyre string:
“They did not forget me, Achilles…
my name is bound to yours
twined in bronze and grief.
They sang my fall beneath the walls of Troy,
they knew… they knew I was beloved.”
“O Patroclus,” I cried across the gulf of silence,
“O companion of my heart, O dearer than breath—
yes, they sang you, but they knew only shadows.
They praised my spear but not your steadying hand,
they heard my wrath but not our laughter in the tents,
they saw my grief but not the mornings when you woke
and the world was whole
because you breathed within it.
Glory is one thing, beloved,
but your nearness was another—
greater than all the songs
that mortals weave.”
Then darker came your voice, like distant thunder:
“Yet had you not brooded, had you not nursed your wounded pride,
I might have lived to see another dawn.
I wore your armor, Achilles, and with it, your doom—
my blood became the price of your great wrath,
my grave the shadow of your choice.
They sing your glory,
but it is built upon ashes from my pyre.”
I reached through the darkness.
My hands closed on nothing.
The Voice of Echo
Then from the depths where memory dwells eternal,
Echo came, bearing fragments of what was,
and in her broken voice I heard my mother’s prophecy,
scattered like pearls upon the wine-dark deep:
“Two fates… two fates bear you toward death’s end…
If here you remain… remain fighting the sons of Troy…
brief is your life… brief… but your glory undying…
undying through all the generations of men…
If homeward you sail… you sail to Phthia’s shore…
long life awaits… awaits… but your name dies with you…
dies with you like smoke upon the wind…”
“Two roads… two roads I set before you…
Choose… choose… but know that I will lose you…
lose you in either path you take…”
Her voice faded
like waves withdrawing from a distant shore.
Epilogue: The Wisdom of Shadows
So here I abide, famed beyond forgetting,
hollow as the caves where no wind stirs.
O Patroclus, my brother, my breath made flesh—
they remember our names
twined in bronze and sorrow,
but none recall the quiet mornings when you woke
and smiled,
and the world was made new.
The poets crown me with eternal fire.
Eternity burns cold
without you near.
Alone.
[This poem revises a version first published here on August 18, 2025. It appears here in a later and more considered form.]
Northcoast Antiquarian 