Christopher Logue, excerpt from 'War Music'

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excerpt from War Music

King Agamemnon calls:

'Silent and still for Hector of the soaring war-cry,
The irreplaceable Trojan.'

Then hands removed his shield, his spear,
And all Greece saw his massive frame, historical
In his own time, a giant on the sand. Who said:

'Greek King: I speak for Ilium.
We have not burned you in your ships.
You have not taken Troy. Ten years have passed.

Therefore I say that we declare a truce,
And, having sworn before the depths of Heaven to keep our word,
Here, in God's name, between our multitudes,
I will fight any one of you to death.
And if I die,' (this said within an inch of where he will)
'My corpse belongs to Troy and to Andromache;
My body-bronze to him who takes my life;
And to you all, Helen, your property, who was no prisoner,
with her gold.

And if I live: my victim's plate shall hang
Between the columns of Apollo's porch on our Acropolis,
But you may bear his body to the coast
And crown it with a shaft before you sail
Home in your ships to your beloved land
With nothing more than what you brought to mine.

Pick your best man. Commit yourselves to him.
Be sure that I am big enough to kill him,
And that I cannot wait to see him die.
Then in their turn, faring from world to world across our sea,
Passengers who come after us will remark:
"That shaft was raised for one as brave and strong
As any man who came to fight at Troy,
Saving its Prince, Hector,
Superb on earth until our earth grows cold,
Who slaughtered him." Now who will that Greek be?'

by Christopher Logue (1926-2011)