Encountering the Iliad - Nina Mermey Klippel

[Larry Robinson]

Encountering the Iliad

“…he missed him and hit Gorgythion in the chest…
and his head drooped like a poppy in a spring garden
weighed down with seeds and a heavy rain; so his head
leaned to one side beneath the weight of his helmet.”
                                              The Iliad, Stephen Mitchell translation

How is it that words
Leap off the page
And into my brain?
Like rain,
Some rest on the surface,
Then evaporate. 
Others sink deep,
And nourish thoughts
That may be seeding there,
Unknown to me.

How is it that I care
About Gorgythion, who lived,
If at all,
Thousands of years ago,
And whose name I never heard
Till this moment?

Perhaps that is what poetry is for:
To awaken us to something new,
Something in ourselves
We’d never met before.

“There are greater things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamed of in your philosophy.”


           - Nina Mermey Klippel
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