The Second Slaughter

　　Lucia Perillo

　　Achilles slays the man who slew his friend, pierces the corpse

　　behind the heels and drags it

　　behind his chariot(二輪戰(zhàn)車) like the cans that trail

　　a bride and groom. Then he lays out

　　a banquet(宴會) for his men, oxen and goats

　　and pigs and sheep; the soldiers eat

　　until a greasy moonbeam lights their beards.

　　The first slaughter is for victory, but the second slaughter is for grief—

　　in the morning more animals must be killed

　　for burning with the body of the friend. But Achilles finds

　　no consolation in the hiss and crackle(裂紋) of their fat;

　　not even heaving four stallions on the pyre(火葬用的柴堆)

　　can lift the ballast of his sorrow.

　　And here I turn my back on the epic hero—the one who slits

　　the throats of his friend's dogs,

　　killing what the loved one loved

　　to reverse the polarity of grief. Let him repent

　　by vanishing from my concern

　　after he throws the dogs onto the fire.

　　The singed fur makes the air too difficult to breathe.

　　When the oil wells of Persia burned I did not weep

　　until I heard about the birds, the long-legged ones especially

　　which I imagined to be scarlet, with crests like egrets

　　and tails like peacocks, covered in tar

　　weighting the feathers they dragged through black shallows

　　at the rim of the marsh. But once

　　I told this to a man who said I was inhuman, for giving animals

　　my first lament(哀悼) . So now I guard

　　my inhumanity like the jackal

　　who appears behind the army base at dusk,

　　come there for scraps with his head lowered

　　in a posture that looks like appeasement(緩和，平息)

　　though it is not.