Parmenion

I am the General of the conquering armies
In victories condemned to distance
That hath nor precedent
Nor the ends even of this world.

And here now the King’s seal beams
Like the scorching Median sunrise
While in mock reverence
His deputies come to me
Like immense ravens hopping backwards through time.

I, who generaled for father and child,
Wiser far than legends retell,
Must toward the East under Cleander’s black eyes,
Ever eastward into oblivion.
What is it then to stand at king’s left hand;
To be half the body and all the dust?

To slay the Illyrians as the prince nursed;
Gallop the plain at Gaugamela;
Hack through bone incredulous?
O philosopher speak:
How many thousand days does it take to make a man?
How few hours to unmake him?
And Philotas stoned like a whore;
The soldiers tears scorned,
The forgotten harangues of Demosthenes
Ringing mute in the ears.

What was another Kebalinos to him, to anyone?
They are all like moths desperate to flutter
Near the king’s glowing skull. Like children,
Their bloated mouths burst with secrets.

This was a low thing that did never touch us:
A lame and broken jaguar the cavalry blasts past,
Thunders with disdain; a trifle!

Now who will stand yet unrazed in the Persian dust
At Alexander’s pleasure,
Immutable as the house of Pindar?

Quick and vainglorious as the eclipse
And as measured in the mind,
How will the royal body go now
Half loped off, the void swallowing
A hundred satraps?

Gulping thighs of Hephaestion will not
Anesthetize him long.

Heirless king, heirless Kingdom
Mendicant soothsayers
Baying at black entrails and wing'ed omens
Prophesying like grandmothers;
Apollo abandoning the child in the reeds
Of Babylon; the greed of Ptolomys;
The gilt marvel of centuries

And the Laecedemonians laughing splashing in the Aegean.

Stone leg that never tripped
Rock arm that never faltered
Covered in wounds and scars like a pox!
Not a coin of Ecbatanian treasure lost!

Nor two now even for the ferryman.

Curse of Amon,
Madness of Olympia
Consume him!

-So then, in Media, beneath the foul sun of foul Media
The glorious thing is done…


Every face I see an effigy

Daggers abound
Like blades of grass

…the ravens grow long as silent dusk shadows,

Hurriedly shuffle forth…

The blades burns deep beneath

Eyes defiant…


In the valleys of Pella near the Lake of Dionysus
There was a farm once
With summer grapes fat as birds’ eggs
An old fence in want of repair
And a woman with child, smiling, forever.


Parmenion, General, Media, 328 BCE

(c) Rhett Talley