Heroes Have the Whole Earth for Their Tomb

Adam Kirsch

Tonight I read of an ancient war
Once thought self-evidently great,
Out-blazoning all that came before,
Each battlefield a hinge of fate,

And marvel once more at how the gain
Or loss of some extinguished city
Could cause defeated men such pain
And win for the conqueror such glory.

Who wondered then if Amphipolis
Merited agonizing death,
Or doubted that mighty Brasidas
Would, for as long as men drew breath,

Shine forth in his dear-bought renown?
And when did the majesty of act
Imperceptibly dwindle down
To indifferent, objective fact?

Athens and Sparta gripped each other
For thirty years; all those who died
Piled in a single trench together
Could not for an hour have pacified

Insatiable Passchendaele; the dead
Rise in an exponential series
From units in the Megarid
Up to the hundred thousand bodies

Now nourishing the green Ardennes.
If trophies were to be built for all,
The urns would leave no room for men,
The names would require an endless wall.

History that the Greeks released,
Unconscious of evil, from the lamp,
Now finds its scale so far increased
That atom-bomb and murder-camp

Draw less profusion from the heart
Than a few soldiers killed at sea
When Pericles, in the crowded mart,
Read out his invented eulogy.