Memento Mori

What good would it do,
Son of Peleus,
To pull that arrow from your heel?
As you lie there helpless, 
Legs useless and folded beneath you.
Your hand clenched around its fletchings 
Searching for the source 
Of sensations unfamiliar to you.
Pain. Suffering. Mortality. 
How strange…

You are only half god and half man,
And all men must die, even you,  Aristos Achaion.
The god's gift to you was not invulnerability, but speed.
And with that tendon we now name after you severed,
You are just as human as the rest of us. 
That expression of anguish as you look to the sky.
Helmet still dawned as if you could leap up 
And slaughter hundreds more Trojans, but you cannot.

An enraged fall from Godhood 
Forever immortalized in white stone.
Centuries later it still stands. 
Worn and weathered
By the years and all the heavy eyes that fell upon your misery,
Like pouring rain from dark clouds above.

The paradigm of human fatality and flaws.
But you were a god, somewhat at least.
You thought that you would live forever - 
We all think that sometimes.

Remember that you have to die.
Otherwise, how do we know that we spent our life living?
Copyright © | Year Posted 2022

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Agustin Avatar
December 6, 2022 at 7:09 PM
Thanks for sharing this. Welcome to Poetry Soup. I welcome you with the love of the Lord, expressed by John 3:16 of the Bible, "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." God bless you.
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