From "The 2012 Phillies: A Hyper-Link'd Chapbook": Achilles, repaired

Author's note: Second in a series.

Hector with his dying breath then said, "I know you what you are, and was sure that I should not move you, for your heart is hard as iron; look to it that I bring not heaven's anger upon you on the day when Paris and Phoebus Apollo, valiant though you be, shall slay you at the Scaean gates."

-Homer, The Iliad, Book XXII

Achilles, repaired

The conceit of it: To imagine
that a reattachment of our fatal flaw to ourselves
could ever go well - I mean,
infection was inevitable, and while the word from Delphi
was "setback," generally we muttered: "behind the barn."

He was supposed to be this undying warrior-king,
hand-dipped in the River Styx, but he got whacked, and ever since
the stench of that mortality misdirected our anger
and embodied the grief of the people.

We've shot horses for less,
or put them out to stud, or
if they couldn't run with the fast mares anymore
harvested their balls until the whinnying stopped
so we could drown in our money
rather than remember our pieces.

***
Previous posts from The 2012 Phillies: A Hyper-Link'd Chapbook:

"Past a diving Wigginton"