Andromache Queen

This poem was written in 2010, and is essentially unfinished.  It is about the fall of Troy, and Dardania to the Mykene Greeks, the story of Homer’s Iliad.  The survivors of Troy, led by Helikaon, the last prince of Troy, went on an epic journey west, the “islands” in the mists - Italy.  There, they founded the settlements of the seven hills, which eventually united to form the city of Rome.

Centuries later, it was the Roman empire that conquered the Hellenistic world, and ruled the lands they came from in legend, and the lands of the descendants of those who once sacked the land of their ancestors.  History is a circle.

Andromache Queen, Andromache Queen.

Helikaon speaks from lands unseen.

Troy had fallen, Dardadia dead.

Agamemnon killed, the Mykene unled.

Dying is bliss,

The living is hell

For what we miss,

The dead cannot tell

When hope is lost,

Just come across.

And once you enter,

The pain does not matter

Not anymore.

Not ever more.

We all have a time appointed.

We all have a role anointed.

We are all led to believe eventually;

The pain will stop, physically, emotionally.

But it does not. It could not.

It is a faithless lie.

No soul is given greater than it can bear,

Such a burden, the bottom of the stair.

That when you fall, it will not be to Tartarus.

That fates measure hope against utterers

Of patience and faith and sinners and saints.

But Epiales whispers, and despair taints.

The days are bleak, the nights insane.

One day you are Arkilles, one day Hektor.

One day a saint, one day a sinner.

And every day, faith becomes fainter.

A distant memory.

We have decided after much thought,

For too long the battle has been fought.

That every time one starts to believe and hope,

The sun has risen, they start to cope.

The dawn has broken, the birds about.

The Night is theirs; the stars shine out.

It was all false, it was a mirage.

That in the end, merely a facade.

It was all a faithless lie.

Esquiline tired, Palatine cannot go on.

Aventine wants to sleep forever gone.

And never wake up in earthly bounds.

Capitoline not arise when Remus sounds.

Quirinal tried hard; Viminal can attest.

But in the end, even Caelian Hill failed the Test.

But sleep, and wait and await,

When centuries past, and a new fate,

Those seven hills arose as Rome,

And empire, an imperial throne.

That did go east, to Epirus,

And Makedon, and Thebes,

And take the lands of the Mykene,

So, history repeats, unbeknownst, Mykene.