5Pain tore through me,
Ripping my thoughts
and dreams
and hopes
Into shreds floating on the wind.
A spear sat heavy in my breast,
Weighing me down;
Down to the earth
Which embraced me like
A long lost child,
Down to death:
Cold and hard and unforgiving.
I wanted to cry out:
To tell them it didn't matter.
That no city, however great,
Was worth this pain.
I wanted to tell them
That the gods cared not
For our petty rivalries;
That pain was their only gift to us
In the end.
I remembered the slave girl
I had captured years ago
With wild black hair and
Eyes that lit in the night;
Full of passion,
And anger,
And hate.
I remembered my wife
Weaving on the big loom;
Stars and blood and spears
Forming under her skilled hands.
I remember the squall of a child,
Its mother killed in battle,
And the thrust of my spear
Which ended its cries.
I wept for life,
But there was no breath in me
To scream all that needed to be screamed,
No breath to apologize for my sins,
No breath left to curse my killer
Or avenge my death.
The world was black
And the pain was everywhere.
I could not escape.
I gasped one last time,
My blood flowing into the earth,
And the fates cut the thread of my life.
I was:
A soldier at Troy.
I was:
Nothing.