90. Napoleon

A new man came.
Napoleon!
A new Caesar.
Napoleon!
To some a great leader.
Napoleon!
To others the scourge of Europe.
Napoleon!
Born of Corsica.
Napoleon!
Joining the army of France.
Napoleon!
Rising through the ranks.
Napoleon!
To shed the short robes for long ones.
Napoleon!
Napoleon!
Napoleon!
From the terrors of the burning revolutions
With fire in his eyes
The deep, calculating general
Moved out and declared war on Europe.
Eastward!
Eastward!
East he marched
Taking land from Austria
With the dream of Rome in his heart.
He went through Spain and Portugal.
To the ends of the European world!
Napoleon found it hard to resist Russia’s calling
So he crossed the border.
The icy blast of the Russian winter drove him back.
He lost the fight.
He was dethroned and forced into exile.
He escaped and rebuilt his army.
Waterloo was his final defeat.
Napoleon only lived on as a person three more times
But his name and memory will last forever.
He joined the graveyard of dead empires and powerful rulers.
Crossing Hades’ mighty river.

56. Aeneas’s Journey

“Arms and the man I sing, the first who came

Compelled by fate an exile out of Troy…” (The Aeneid, Rolfe Humphies translation)

“Remember what they did”

Said the ghosts of Trojan women,

“Remember the fire.”

“The horse.”

“How they cut down our heroes”

“How they murdered us”

“Tearing our children from our comforting arms.”

Those words haunted him

As Aphrodite’s son escaped the mighty cyclopean walls.

His people burned.

They pleaded for help from Athena

But it was all in vain.

Hera’s hatred sent them to their doom.

Hector appeared to injured Aeneas in a dream.

“My brother,”

The fallen prince told him,

“Fate has given you a chance”

“To get even with those that did this.”

“Go west and you shall see.”

“In the land above Sicily.”

Aeneas and his family

Left the dead and ruined city.

To the ships they went

Eager to find this new promised land.

They came to Thrace

Where the black blood of Polydorus

Gave warnings of greed in the land

Sending them off once again.

Apollo’s island welcomed them

With great earthquake

They were off to Crete, the lonely Isle

Where, in a dream, he was told of Italus’ land.

Passed the turning point they traveled

Where flocks of harpies pestered them.

They followed Greek islands

Up to the lands that Alexander saved.

From there they sailed passed the boot

That will house their future home

To the land where Poseidon’s sons live.

They saved a man from the one eyed one.

Left carelessly by the horse maker on his way home.

Then between the treacherous rocky whirlpool and sister monster.

After surviving those two beasts

They met a storm stirred up by Hera

That brought them to rest on Dido’s mighty shores.

As Aeneas told his story

Aphrodite set the queen aflame.

In a cave on hunting trip

Came Dido’s poor undoing.

Aphrodite’s son promised marriage

But left her to fall to her grave

Cursing the Trojan race

And all who spring from them.

After a visit to Hades’ land

They went north to their promised fate.

40. The Trojan War

A bloody battle soon ensued

On the plain of Illium.

The Akhaians came one thousand fold.

To take the city and her gold.

Curses and plagues flowed through the Greek camp

As gods played with mice and men.

The weakness of their great champion

Wasn’t only his heel.

Bloody stalemate caused red waterfalls

The fell to Hades’ land.

Pyres burned day and night

Because of the week foot’s stubborn ways.

Achilles, the man with fragile heel

Pouted in his tent

Because his precious trophy was taken away.

He stayed there

Like the man of marble that he was.

Even with his brothers’ cries

He just wouldn’t break.

But then the cracks began to show

When his Petroklos

Was carried to Hades’ hated den.

“Alas, Poor Petroklos!”

They cried in torment.

“Hero to us all.”

“While ours was pouting in his tent”

“Only he answered his brother’s call.”

So Achilles went

To challenge the horse trainer Hector.

“No prayers from you to me.”

He said as he desecrated his body.

Achilles dragged Hector across Illium’s great plain

Never once to let up

Priam’s pleading went unheard

So the gods had to intervene.

Achilles relented.

They had their funeral pyre.

It was an arrow from the Trojan prince’s hand

That helped him follow Hector down to that god-forsaken land.

A crafty island king and his wooden horse

Brought the city’s final end.