The Summons
When boys swam in the river
While their brothers and sisters
Helped with ploughing, milking,
Stripping feathers off the chickens
Before the weekend feast, and if
The mood came on them hiding
In the thickest part of the field
Where the wheat was as high as
The eaves of houses, or so it seemed,
Making love before the elders decreed
It was time for marriage and procreation,
Growing up which also meant using
A spear to fell a man, an arrow to drop
Enemies dead though they asked not
Once but several times what is an enemy,
Which was before coming back late
From hunting wild boar, seeing,,
At the village’s edge the bright bronze
of armoured men, catching smell of horses
which none of them or their families owned
Though aspired to in dreams of fame.
It was too late to run away,hide
In the far field, the wheat still high,
From the chief whose armour was golden
In the sun who said rather loudly
There was war over the sea,
In a place called Troy. Achaeans
from Sparta,Thebes, far-off Crete,
had to muster, serve Agamemmnon.
He’d summoned judges,army chiefs
bureaucrats, and shipmasters
To his palace at Argos,
told them in no uncertain terms,
that the Gods wanted this, not least
Athena and what she said went
since one did not disobey gods lightly.
So all of us who’d thrown a spear,
or brought down a deer at fifty paces
with an arrow clean to the heart,
what could we do but volunteer ?
Our mothers howled most horribly
In front of girl friends who knew that
Weddings would not happen,no babies
Would be hoist proud on our shoulders
For several years, and maybe not ever.
And Myrmidon, who was a bit more learned,
Muttered about Thanatos and Hypnos ,yet
We did not stay to listen but rushed home
To stammer farewells, gather up clothes;
For that was how it happened.
Michael Baron has had poems published in Other Poetry/South Bank Poetry/ The Journal/The Third Way/Jewish Quarterly/Herne Hill Society magazine. He is editor/co-editor of: On A Bats Wing /The Night Shift (Five Leaves Press), The Cockermouth Poets -1700-2012 (River Poets (2010)Cockermouth), How Hall- Selected Poems of Tom Rawling (1916-1996) (Lamplugh Heritage Society), Wordsworth and the Famous Lorton Yew Tree (Lorton Historical Society).