i think often of Achilles triple-shot
how he returned to the war before his armor was made
by Hephaestus of the golden-dragging foot
to his naked rage and slaughtered twelve with just his voice

then we are gifted some pretty face of a shield
and as all the seas daughters in threnody behind him
his myriad aunts and his mother verging on hysterical
its light-footed Vulcan tuning weather that i remember

and as amber waves of hair around her loomed fluvial
like civilization swashing blind into the bloodstorm
although material and form were mountainwork and metal
a cetacean iris was blooming around her tectonic teapot

//

rereading book 18 of Homer’s Iliad