I have been reading too many epics

He sits in his bathtub, Prince

Hector of the city, when

wind comes by to prick, a wince

threatens, he bites it off, then

pants grasping for the golden

rails on the gossip walls. Ten

minutes pass he is shaven—

first shave, Hecuba, would you

believe it. Clang! The workmen

clang in the unseen (but to

clang in the visible our

Prince has yet this task to do).

Breakfast: the grapes are too sour,

and he makes it known with one

swift reprimand, for such pow’r

breathes rapt in his hand (not won,

but born with) and after milk

the sand outside in white sun

eats his sandaled feet like silk

until his plastic will brings

him to the pavement’s light lilt

but its gray stony scalp thinks

the shod ankles of the boy

are better off inside. Since

Hector follows Priam’s ploy

(or follows a boyish plot,

treats the hammer like a toy),

Athene pales as if in rot

and her shield lies decomposed.

Hector trundles forward not

ready. He stares at his toes.

The hammer in his knapsack

flies to Zeus and back, a roast

handle holding its head. Hacked

to the brain and pink his heart

Hector sees the  billow, slack

in step. The smiths’ fiery art

stinks, offense to him, but that

excused by his mind-tongue, tart.

Still, his arrogance never fat,

he enters in, tardy now.

He drops his bag on the mat

and explains glumly Just How

he got late. He doesn’t get

to finish. “Prince, please you bow.”

Hector’s child-hair tastes helmet.

He sees himself mirrored, Troy's

Prince Hector, and the onset.

___________

This poem was birthed only because of my inability to stop reading epics this year. I opted for fixed syllables in tercets (although not metered strictly), since I find free verse's liberty intoxicating and overwhelming. A fixed syllable scheme is also more fun for me: you begin with a rule—not necessarily with a story or even an image—then get surprised where it takes you. The (cheating) terza rima scheme is actually due more to Derek Walcott's Omeros than to Dante, because I'm not reading Dante in the Italian, and it isn't the Sayers translation either. Omeros is a postmodern epic, written in quasi-hexameter-terza-rima-variation, the incipit of which:

"This is how, one sunrise, we cut down them canoes."
Philoctete smiles for the tourists, who try taking
his soul with their cameras. "Once wind bring the news 

to the laurier-cannelles, their leaves start shaking
the minute the axe of sunlight hit the cedars,
because they could see the axes in our own eyes."

a-b-a b-c-d. Twelve syllables each line. Not Dantean terza rima, not Homeric hexameter, but a certainly more tractable fusion of both, and informed by free verse.

(Side note: Omeros is dazzling; not understandable entirely, but absolutely brilliant. I recommend it, if you have time to spare.)