Under Troy’s wall, in mid-battle,
Cygnus, the son of Neptune,
Had gone through the Greeks twice
And sent a freshly butchered thousand
Tumbling into the underworld. Opposite –
The chariot of Achilles, through the Trojans,
A tornado through a dense forest,
Had left a swathe of shattered trunks,
Vital roots in the air, a tangle of limbs.
Achilles was looking for Hector.
But Hector’s humiliation
Had been deferred a decade into the future.
Meanwhile, here stood Cygnus,
With arrogant scowl and blood-washed weapons,
The champion of the moment. Achilles
Fixed his attention on him.
‘Think yourself lucky,’ he shouted,
‘As you leave your pretty armour to me,
That it was Achilles who killed you.’
Then he drove his team straight at him,
And sent a spear between their white necks
To drop Cygnus under their hooves.
The aim was perfect,
But the blade, that should have split the sternum,
And the heavy shaft,
That should have carried clean through the body,
Bounced off, like a reed thrown by a boy.
Achilles, astounded, skidded his team to a halt.
Cygnus was laughing.
‘I know which goddess was your mother.
The Queen of the Nereids.
But why be surprised if you cannot kill me?
Do you think I wear this helmet
Crested with the tails of horses
For protection? Or that I present this shield
To save my skin? Or tuck myself in a breastplate
Because I am nervous?
I carry these for ornament only,
Just as Mars himself does. Naked,
My skin would still be proof
Against the whole Greek arsenal,
Including yours. This is what it means
To be the son not of a sea-nymph
But of Neptune, lord of the whole ocean
And all its petty deities.’
His spear followed his words –
Achilles, with a gesture, caught it
On the boss of his shield.
The bronze could not stop it.
Nine hardened ox-hides behind the bronze
Could not stop it. The tenth ox-hide stopped it.
Achilles shook it off,
And sent a second spear –
Its shaft vibrating in air –
That bounced off Cygnus, as if off the wall of Troy.
A third as heavy, as fast, and as accurate,
Did no better. Cygnus stood open-armed
Laughing to welcome these guests
That knocked on his chest. By now Achilles
Was groaning with anger
Like the bull that pivots in the arena
Among the scarlet cloaks, his tormentors,
Who cannot be pinned down, but flutter away
From every swipe of his points.
Achilles retrieved his failed spears –
And could hardly believe what he found:
The great blades
Sharp and intact as ever.
‘What’s happened to my strength?’ he muttered.
‘Is there something about this fellow that has spellbound
The power of my arm –
The same arm
That pulled down the wall of Lyrnessus
When I smashed Thebes
Like a pitcher
Full of the blood of the entire populace?
When I dug such trenches with my weapon
The river Caicus drained
Whole nations of their crimson?
Here, too, this arm has slaughtered so many
Their heaped corpses make monuments – pyramids
All along the shore, to remind me
What strength is in it.’
As he pondered this, he noticed
Menoetes, one of the Lycians.
Exasperated, to reassure himself,
He hurled a spear, like a yelled oath.
It went through the breastplate of Menoetes
As if through a letter
He happened to be reading.
It drove on,
And clattered the stones beyond as if it had missed –
But splashing them with blood.
As Menoetes –
Like a crocodile straining to get upright –
Beat his brow on the earth towards which he
crumpled,
Achilles recovered the spear. ‘This corpse, this spear
And this arm, I have proved, are perfect Achilles.
Now with the help of heaven,’ he cried, ‘let Cygnus
Join us in a similar combination.’
And he flung the spear – and it travelled
As if along a beam
That passed through the left nipple of the target.
But at a clang the shaft bowed
And sprang off sideways. Nevertheless
At that point of impact a splat of blood
Brought a cry from Achilles –
A cry of joy, ignorant
That what he saw was the blood of Menoetes.
He leapt onto Cygnus like a tiger,
Hacking at him from every direction
With his aerobatic sword.
The flaring helmet flew off in shards
Like the shell of a boiled egg.
And the shield
Seemed to be making many wild efforts
To escape in jagged fragments.
But Achilles’ blade
Bit no deeper. With a pang of despair
He saw its edge turning, like soft lead,
As he hewed
At the impenetrable neck sinews
Of this supernatural hero.
He lifted his shield
And slammed the boss full in the face of Cygnus,
Spreading the nose like a crushed pear
And denting the skull-front concave
In a shower of teeth. At the same time
He pounded the top of his skull with the sword pommel,
Left, right, left, right, boss and pommel.
Cygnus staggered backwards,
His head on its anvil, under two giant hammers,
His neck-bones splintering, his jawbone lolling to his
chest.
Terror and bewilderment had already
Removed the world from Cygnus.
A big rock blocked his retreat, he fell over
Splayed backwards across it,
Like a victim on an altar.
And now Achilles hoisted him
By his helpless legs, and whirled his head
On the diameter of his noble height
Like an axe. Through the vertical arc
Slam down onto the edged stones.
Then dropped on him, knee staving the rib-cage.
He gripped and twisted the thong –
All that remained of the fled helmet –
Under his chin, a tourniquet that tightened
With the full berserk might of Achilles
Till the head almost came off,
And Cygnus was dead.
Achilles’ eyes cleared, as he kneeled there
Panting and cooling.
But now, as he undid the buckles
That linked the corpse’s gorgeous armour,
He found his plunder empty.
In those moments
Neptune’s word had breathed in off the ocean
And carried away Cygnus
On white wings, their each wingstroke
Yelping strangely – a bird with a long
Undulating neck and a bruised beak
Aimed at a land far beyond the horizon.