WAR DITTY (1)

Alcaeus, Horace and Anacreon,

Good cowards all (though brave in song),

I too grew nervous, dropped my gun,

And voted medals for the strong.

I favored too the striking of a kiss

Above the tantrums of a bomb;

I did my duty to my private bliss,

Alcaeus, Horace and Anacreon.

[These lyric poets, like Archilochus before them, all fled in battle: the first from the Athenians in their war against his native Lesbos in the sixth century B.C., the second at the Battle of Philippi in 42 B.C. in which Antony and Octavian defeated and killed Brutus and Cassius, and the third — again in the sixth century B.C. — from Cyrus the Great, founder of the Persian empire. The first person of the poem is of course simply “a speaker”.]