Even Dead He Won Poem by Joseph S. Josephides

We considered Kimon’s expedition as a cruise.

Until he faced the Death up with contempt;
he fell in blood by a tart, still he adjured us:
‘I hasten to adore my country to the extreme,
or else I will be left apart to love her only fairly.
In the sea-battle just sustain the Idea upwards’.

Then, three of us get up and wash his wound,
another two tie him on the mast, his panoply upright,
one, behind him, holds his hand and dangles his sword,
one, by my side, swings his shield, now left now right,
and I open up and shut his jaws, shouting instead of him:

'Go forward: Kition is Hellas; Hellas is where Greeks do live'.

His soul flies in the air, his body is alive in our hands
caressed by the sea froth, his hair by the breeze.
The fellow soldiers from other triremes saw him and dashed,
the Persians around us run away with panic and are torn.

Kimon, even dead, he won. Invulnerable
Idea, no matter if it’s taken by mutilated arms.
Such death is a resurrection. Lift up body and spirit!

If we live a coward’s live, we die many times every day;
a brave dies once; thanks to his death the Idea never died.

Life, by dying you become the other phoenix and erect still.



© JosephJosephides