Monday, May 31, 2021

ACHILLES IN MEMORIAM

by Janice D. Soderling


Graphic: Odysseus With Achilles In The Underworld. Attica red-figure vase, ca 480 B.C. When Odysseus visits the Underworld in The Odyssey, Achilles tells him, “Glorious Odysseus: don’t try to reconcile me to my dying. I’d rather serve as another man’s labourer, as a poor peasant without land, and be alive on Earth, than be lord of all the lifeless dead.”


Eulogies are written by the living,
never by the dead,
who would probably have said
something quite different about life and giving.


Janice D. Soderling has often published at The New Verse News over the years.  Her most recent collections are War: Make that City Desolate and Rooms and Closets.