The Fall of Troy

Sing now the heavy furniture of the fall, the journey’s ending. Strong Aeneas bears deep on his shoulders all the dark wood chairs and tables of destruction. Bruising, blunt, they force his feet on up the war-scraped hills past raped dead temples. All Achilles kills litters the trail of sofa legs with other endings of houses. Further up, gods sit changing their own upholsteries of deceit, ordaining shelves and benches as the goal of his dim voyage. Sometimes arrows drawn on chair backs point the way they must go on, signs that some corridor of destiny is reserving him a threshold. Aeneas weeps at wind or passion, but steadfastly keeps carrying battered merchandise marked ROME in one direction, pondering it all.