Free A Pretty Sight by David O'Meara Page A

cries.
    I lock the factories, ban mass
    gatherings, building projects and roadwork,
    any hobbies that require scissors, shears, knitting needles, cheers,
    chopping blocks, drums or power saws. It’s not enough.
    I staple streets with rows of egg cartons. I close
    the airports, sabotage wind farms, lobby
    for cotton wool to be installed on every coast. No luck.
    I build a six-metre-wide horn-shaped antenna, climb
    the gantry to the control tower, and listen in.
    I pick up eras of news reports, Motown, Vera Lynn,
Hockey
    Night in Canada
, attempt to eliminate all interference,
    pulsing heat or cooing pigeons, and yet there it is:
    that bass, uniform, residual hum from all directions,
    no single radio source but a resonance left over
    from the beginning of the universe. Does it mean
    I’m getting closer or further away? It helps to know
    whether we’re particle, wave or string, if time
    and distance expand or circle, which is why
    I need to learn to listen, even while I’m listening.

Socrates at Delium
    What do I know? At least these
    last two mornings since the Boeotian
    ranks massed. The whole lot of us
    had been camped inside their border, sea
    at our backs. We thought we’d soon
    be home in Athens. A set of cooking fires
    still smoked behind the earthworks, evidence
    of a hurried defence at the temple we’d occupied,
    an obvious insult. The old seer took
    the ram and made a lattice of its throat,
    our counter-prayer
    for the terror we hoped to inspire.
    Across the dawn fields, the enemy trod
    through the stripped orchards and wheat,
    farmers like us, setting out cold in linen
    and cloaks, the well-to-do armoured
    for glory out front. After weeks of marching,
    the suddenness of it: the general’s shouts,
    his interrupted speech passed down the lines,
    our pipe marking the pace, and far off,
    their war cry rending the November air
    like a thousand sickles. The black doors
    of each empty farmhouse watched our lines
    clatter through stubbled stalks,
    my arm already heavy from the shield.
    ‘Stay tight, stay tight,’ we called across
    the bronze rims, cursing and half out of breath.
    Then a new shout went out
    and we spilled up the ridge at a run
    into the Thebans’ spear thrusts.
    In the push, there’s little room for a view;
    dust scuffed up by thousands of men
    gagged the air. Best to trust in detail,
    watch for sharp jabs at your throat,
    stay flush with the column, and above all else
    don’t fall. Not so easy with the friendly shields
    pressing behind, and reaped furrows
    snatching your balance. Our phalanx
    held, shoving, and forced the Thebans
    back over ground they’d claimed at midday.
    But there was a too-easy feel to it,
    as if we expected they’d break, and we’d slide
    through their lines like lava from Hades.
    Word spread of horsemen on the hill.
    A trick? Who knew? We were servants
    to rumour. A few turned and ran,
    then the rest. Then I did too.
    ‘Don’t show them your backs,’ I cried
    to a group, shopkeepers from the look
    of them. ‘Do you want wounds
there
    when your corpse is exchanged?’
    That turned them around.
    We still had our swords. Scavenging cracked
    spear-lengths to keep the cavalry off,
    we backpedalled over corpses, boulders
    and olive roots into dusk. That was two days ago.
    More rumours follow us to Attica: Hippocrates
    dead, how we were outnumbered,
    whispers of the slaughter chittering in our ears
    like broken cart wheels. Though we know the direction
    home, we stall, not from plague that still strays
    in its streets, but the shame of retreat.
    Night, the cooking fires again.
    We who are left, battered stragglers, scoop gruel
    and wait for orders to seek out our dead.
    Now, on the edge of the firelight, a rhapsode
    recites an ancient passage, his voice recalling Troy,
    the dark-beaked ships and grief for Patroclus.
    We were brave enough, but couldn’t hold.
    What use is a story or a song?

The Afterlives of Hans and Sophie Scholl
    ‘Allen Gewalten zum Trotz sich