Looking below them,

We find they have a structure of fire

Of the ghosts

Of the gobbets

That remain after the spent flesh of battle

On the one side:

Priam, Antiphus, Troilus, Dolites

Apollo, Aphrodite, Ares

Artemis, Xanthus, Leto

Say the names

On the other:

Agamemnon, Hera, Ajax, Achilles

Hermes, Hephaestus, Thetis, Poseidon,

Achaens all

Say the names

Vengeance is a great stone quickly bent down

to pick up and uncoiling

Whipped into bloody space

No accident that the swords look phallic-

Each tribe had sex at heart-

The sex of Helen, of Achilles

Spread out in blood:

A book opened to the section on exotic surgical procedures.

A dog run over on the highway, flayed alive

by the undercarriage of a semi.

To fight the battle this way, on canvas, is to

Die every death.

What is Cassandra doing in the House of Priam?

2-twombly

In the end, what we have are the shades

After all is burnt,

The shades:

Achilles, Patroclus, and Hector, who was hard to draw

He had to be wiped out a hundred times.

What happened to Paris?

Well, we’ll always have Paris, won’t we, kid?

Here’s looking at you Mr. Cy Twombly,

Here, is looking, at you.

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