Jeffrey Hull

Reflections on, well, reflections.

Achilles



Achilles would not see old age nor wife,
His sea-nymph mother Thetis had foretold;
The choice was storied glory or long life,
And fame was far more dear than growing old.
Undying life, to be forever free
Of earthly bonds of body, time and space:
To break those ties and live in memory,
A tale three thousand years could not efface.

But mortal I obediently stand
Before this cold-eyed mirror every day
And note how little worked out as I planned,
And idly note my body's slow decay.
But if Achilles lived, he lived not so—
And I've got this to do, and there to go.


© 2005 Jeffrey Hull

So much is made of the man in the mirror one tends to forget the mirror in the man. On a clear day, they say, one can see forever. A certain immortality in that. The cosmos ponders its expanse as it can. One of those methods involves human consciousness.

Immortal glory or a long life? I say that those times when we grasp some of the rich vastness of 'it all', immortal glory is ours.

Achilles heel was not his tendon but his mortality. THe su8n's glory is not its long life but its passing brilliance.