I sing both war and one man, who from Troy
Fated to exile, sailed to Italy,
Reaching its Lavinian shore; he breasted
Incredible oceanic wrath aimed
By vindictive Juno above and bore
Peril as bad in war to found
His town, but won, installed his gods, begat
The Alban line, which built the walls of Rome.
Muse, remind me what had caused her hate
Who, intent upon his downfall, set
Him in that constant crucible of war:
What threat to goddesses are men? She knew
He was pious and yet she beset him
Out of base envy. Can the gods be so vain?
An ancient city, founded by Tyrians
Displaced but resurgent, now renamed
Carthaginians, mirrored Tiber’s mouth,
And Juno wished them dominant. They loved her
More than Troy, more than Argos or Samos,
And she lay her relics there, for it was
Strong in trade and arms, gorgeous in art,
Yet it was prophesied to be seized by
Trojan descendants—whose town spurned her,
Favoring Venus. Troy’s survivors now
Sown seaward, it was trivial
Which one would lead them back to grace and set
The prophecy in motion: Aeneas
Had always won the favor of the gods because he was
Half-divine, born of Venus. He’d lived
Through many failures by the grace of indulgent gods,
Slipped under spears; but now Carthage’s doom
Was pent in meager ships, and every wave
Can become a club. So Juno schemed
To batter them all down to Hell in a hurricane, hoping
That she could push the prophecy down
To milder impact were its mark less charmed,
Since a prophecy is only as strong as its hero.
She went to Jove first for her storm’s design,
Kneeled pleading: “My spouse, from the smoking wreck
Of Troy its refugees now swarm west, bent
To seat their seed and resurrect their reign
Of empire, soon to teem and by sword to set scourge
With all-defiling hands, to all in reach,
Among the victims of which march you know
Is as the gray Fates told us doomed to be
Carthage in Africa. In monuments, a city has never—”
“Loved you more avidly.”
“—Proclaimed its worth more proudly,
Sending in censers endless smoking reams
Of sacrifices to us, my love, in temples
Built with gold almost like they were on Olympus,
So that my soul could summer there and live there.”
“And so you want—”
“No second Troy, no struggles again, no fighting,
No second tumor that blooms out, only a single
Shear snap to end it.”
Lightning, he replied:
“And yet when Sarpedon, the best of men,
Heir of Bellerophon, was doomed to die
To Patroclus down on the Trojan plain
And I considered interceding, you
Warned me of repercussions, slippery slopes,
Resentment from the other gods potentially causing discord…
But now, when it’s your temples are at stake,
Fate is indeed worth defying? Woman please.
You should be ashamed to have brought this before my seat.
Especially since my familial bond
To Sarpedon was more meritorious far
Than this weak greed for adoration.”
She reached for him; he pushed her off and said
“My queen, you don’t quite seem to comprehend
The concept of neutrality. I didn’t care.
If Troy’s fall pleased you, I’m pleased of that.
But the brutality with which it was sacked was hideous.
After such needless carnage
The time has come to mediate our courses,
Not lay down annihilation. Aeneas lives,
Trojan Latium rises, Carthage falls.”
So this, she contemplates, is this to be
The power of Juno? Shackled, servile, bound
To what a plea can wrest from him? Who then,
If Carthage falls or if it stood, could ever
Call on her name in worship, high or quotidian?
And nursing emberescent pride, left, seeking
Anemoi to match her animus
And by animus of anemos drown
Aeneas. So she went under the clouds,
To the winds’ regent, Aeolus’s, home,
A carved immense cave palace in the peak
Of his eponymous island, which unlike
Normal rooted earth floats on the waves, nomadic,
And was now near Ionia. So intense
Was the wind within the mountain, that it moved
Forward unsinking though detached.
Zephyr and Eurus,
Boreas and Notus, were the names
Of the beings set inside there
Lest they blow the world bare.
And meeting with him she addressed him:
“Lord
Aeolus, since my husband, lord of storms
Although reserving lightning armament
To his own private clutch, gave you the winds,
Which in this mountain writhe contained, and which
You with most faithful delegation wield
Toward what command he thunders from above
On his cloud-shrouded seat, I now enjoin
The fury of your engines to new task:
For as you know, old thousand-towered Troy
Once splendor of the Dardans, but destroyed
At my own husband’s verdict and desire
Yet let some seed scape loose, whose leader now
Traverses the Tyrrhenian, fast bound
Past Sicily and toward the fabled site,
The Tiber’s mouth, upon the Latin shore,
Which if they reach, the Trojan War
Was as good as for nothing, for they soon
Will re-erect a town—not just of stone,
But gleaming, cloudlike marble—ringed with walls—
To easily surpass their Dardan source
And subdue all surrounding regions. Steward of winds,
My enemies cross the Tyrrhenian;
Set storms on them to drown them as they sail.”
That said she lounged back, arms in regnant sprawl
But meeting at the fingertips, and locked
The wind god with kohl-rimmed gaze
But tension unstated, subsurface the dare
And challenge of power. Then when he made to speak
She cut him off and summoned up her train
Of gorgeous nereids from the floor, all dressed
Not in the slutty near-transparent gauze
Favored by nymphs of Venus, but instead
Long white high-waisted dresses whose gold belts
Were cinched obediently. “Do this, my friend
And from the lineup of my nymphs I swear
To you as your immediate bride
Deiopia, the fairest, whose face shines
Bright and immortal as a midnight sun
Glowing Hyperborean, or Arctic
Where ice magnifies the light to blinding. Now,
I’d offer you the kingship of all Asia
But I hear that these days this is what guys prefer.”
“Very funny. No, but actually
You don’t even need to try that. After all
You got me this position, without which
I’d never have experienced ‘the life’,
And I’d be nothing now. My queen, my task
Is to fulfill your orders. And besides,
The South Wind’s son Sirocco is uncaged,
Not in this mountain, and they’re in his jaw.
Any tempest we begin
Then seeing his friends’ and kins’ delight he’ll rush
Straight north to join with streams of dust. And soon
Come slamming from the south to twin our efforts.”
With that he twirled his trident, causing streams
From all four winds to peel off and combine
To form a shrieking sphere of Mach-speed air,
A detonatory orb of curdled winds,
Which with a telekinetic wave he hurled
Out from the cave mouth, speeding it across
The foam-splayed sleek Aegean, westward bound,
Gathering wind as it whirled, contuming clouds
With centripetal momentum, and at last
Exploding as a Mediterranean cyclone
With west off Sicilian eye, therefore whose brunt
Of battering spiral arms fell straight upon
The roaming Trojan fleet. Huge liquid mountains
Moshed against the hulls, the skies went dark,
Their ships rocked in the brackets of the waves;
They tore the sails immediately down
And rushed to man the oars in full. Aeneas
Dashed belowdeck, like all. All they could do
Was tune their prow to the wind’s origin
Constantly, as the waves and the wind tried
To barge them from aerodynamicism down.
Himself contorting his body at the oar,
Their captain shouted in a space, “My men,
Row and it DOESN'T end here, but, I swear
We’ll all die if our own despair prevents
Our arms from investing full effort! Come on, HEAVE!”
The galley became a mass of moaned profanities
As they gave it until all their ceps screamed out
But still kept rowing, while at his own oar
Aeneas kept yelling like a motivational drill queen,
Trying to keep his crew's resolve intact.
They passed wine down the aisle, taking drafts,
Burning through the stores fast. Only Aeneas
Tempting them now near rebellion, urged
To save some for a future only he
Seemed to expect would come. But actually
Instead of the endless optimism his mouth projected, his head
Teemed full of tons of terrors and despairs
Like hellish rap over his booming heartbeat:
I should've died at Diomedes’ spear
Back in his Palladian fury
In the shining hour that made his name forever
When he glowed and wounded gods and devastated everything and dueled me
And as his spear plunged in with a surreal rush
I thought to have found my place in the tapestry
When my helicopter asshole mom
Gypped his kill with teleport rescue.
And I found myself suddenly teetering on Trojan flagstones
Back in the wall’s safe bounds. But holy shit
How better to have found a death in bronze
At the hand of a hero and thereby gain
Secondhanded legacy, than be
A storm-drowned footnote unfit for mention in epics,
Which it seems is what’s in store for me,
Pathetic end to the last Trojan noble.
Gods fucking spare me, what I’d give
For death that pierced fast rather than subsumed,
From someone, not from the unconscious sea,
Which, bashing as it does with pants-pissing terror at the hull
Now seems soon to summarily enclose us…….
And with that, the last figment of Troy lost,
Our lines gone, with all hope of its rebirth,
The whole long legacy of who we are
Dashed by a cauling wave, ships become driftwood.
I thought of dying every day at Troy
And my Elysian self would lodge no grudge
Had the godlike Achillles struck me down
When, again shamefully saved, Lord Neptune swept
Me from his spear’s reach, to the other side
Of the involved field, saying, “Half-divine
Son of Venus, seek no more to duel
Preeminent heroes, for your fate’s reserved
To further purpose than this war, nor is it
Here to slay heroes, though someday to be
Numbered among them
Due to achievements still to come.” Well then
Where’s that supposed high fate now that the waves
That you yourself control strive to submerge us?
Because compared to this pathetic fate,
I had rather I had died at Troy,
Beneath the walls, where Simoeis’ gentle stream
Not this wild torrent, washed away the blood,
Leaving clean bodies; where, my body found
After the battle, there was always hope
The rites would lead me to Elysium, and now
Where are you, mom, to keep me from the suffocation.
Deserted by the gods, and slain by waves…”
While his mouth spewed confident exhortation,
His mind meanwhile multiton anguish, far beneath
The Trojan flagship, down and west, in a palace
Deep in an Atlantic sea rift sat Neptune.
His trident on his lap, and holds himself still,
Attentive to the worldwide ocean’s workings,
Absorbed in his great omniscience of the tides,
When a disturbance grabs him: an unplanned storm
Centered just west of Sicily, engulfing
The entire Italian seaboard. Neptune, dismayed,
Probes for the cause and finds the winds at fault,
Having been let off in excess of their portion
With rare convergence on this single spot,
Rousing up the waves in tempest. And no doubt
He knows who’s the winds’ warden:
“Someday I
Will see that sinecurial asshole’s face
Beat as it should be for misusing what
My brother trusted him with thus.
Aeolus? More like Eelface. Holy shit.”
He paused there consternant, gazing down
At the gilled nightmare nereids who schooled
Lamp-skulled and silvery beneath his throne.
“And now I guess I have to clean this up.”
He swept through the currents with divine mysterious speed
Neither teleportative nor purely accelerant
But moving through matter like thought, the way gods move—magnetized
To the locus that demands them—and surfaced
In the storm’s eye, up among Tyrrhenian waves,
Skies overlain with dust and gruesome clouds
Dispensing hordes of rain. He looks around,
Seeing the way the winds are rigged, and with a grimace
Sensing what incentives have arrayed them,
Seeing poor Troy’s last struggling flagships nigh.
He raises up his head and roars: “Winds, fly
Back to your spineless bureaucratic master
Venal as you are to my hand as him to hers
Whose subterfuge so clearly shows in this,
Before I bring my brother in to rip you
Out of the sky by force. Damned Aeolus…
….Should never have gained that role.
And now, let’s see what happens when we match
His tiny inferior trident of the winds
Next to my vast original whose strength
Beckons and masters all the endless seas.”
That said he casually surveys the storm,
Gripping the vaunted trident that he mentioned;
Which with a single swirl of which, upraised
He calmed down in an instant, for the waves
As when a crazed mob in the streets may pause
Before the porch of a celebrity
Whose wise words can disperse them before bloodshed,
Fell spineless in his presence: now the winds
Rage helpless to upraise them, for each blast
Is countered by responding apathy
Of equal force, obedient to Neptune.
Or to his trident; which, since its power extends
Over all water, also controls clouds,
A power rarely used, in deference
To his sky-ruling brother, but right now
Neptune had no fear of interfering
Since their presence here was deviant,
Clearly not stemming from Jupiter’s command
Or it would have been cleared with Neptune first:
Thus one more brandish of the trident, and
The stormclouds melt, disperse into a mist
That fills the air, and with a gentle fall
Melds back into the sea. Cymothoë
And Triton himself, rearing from the waves
Thrust off ten Trojan ships down from the reefs
That they were trapped on. Meanwhile Neptune strides
Abreast the rolling waves, his trident high
And melts the secret sandbar that had snared
Entellus’ ships, as well as two of those
Now piloted by Pallas, the sole son
Of proud Evander…
And with one last wave
Restores the sea its foamless sheen of blue,
As if no storm ever paraded there.
So, frustrated, the errant winds dispersed.
Back in Aeneas’ flagship, the rowers feel
A sudden stilling of the waves. Amazed,
With half relief, half trepidation,
They send two scouts above to see what’s up...
Some silent seconds pass; all wish to think
The storm has somehow died, but with such immediate
Dissipation how can it have? More like the eye of the cyclone,
They fantasize with dread…But then the steps
Of the two scouts return, their faces awed,
Mute with insane relief except to tell
Their captain he should come ondeck and see.
Aeneas stepped up from his oar
Quiet, since even though sun seeped through the oar-holes
Upward, from the staircase, only shadows
Fell like of a Scylla overlouring.
Face neutral, he walked past the rows of men,
Climbed,
And breaching into the fresh air
Found himself in the massive, mast-crossed shadow of Neptune.
Chest at the waves, eyes level with the mast-top,
Trident held slack in his hand, he looked
Down at the demigod,
...who with a stunned cry
Called the crew up, kneeling, and they came
And kneeled beside him. But the god said “Up.
No natural onset brought that storm, so know
It came without my will. It was the winds,
Commandeered or bribed to come by Juno,
On whom rest the wrecks you see around you,
Scattered now to the horizon’s verge.”
“That’s four? That’s...gods, the dead will number…
No sailor can expect a storm like that.
It came so fast, wracking the skies bad
Like a muscle spasm of clouds, I thought
That Typhon must have broken out of Etna,
Pawed the rock right off and columned out,
That, or that we were, well, cursed by you
For unknown crimes. I’m glad that’s not the case.
But Juno? Why exactly would she cause that?
And why do you then grant us this to know?”
“Because she engineered the storm to kill you.
She hates you on a true prophetic gist,
And craved you all, especially you, drowned
Or from Lavinia at least detained.
Her purpose, though, has partly been achieved
Despite my efforts, for your ships are now
In no state whatsoever to complete
A straight Tyrrhenian traverse—try that,
Half will sink on the way, despite calm weather.
And you’ve been blown off course, somewhat southwest,
More near the dry Maghréb than Sicily.
Take shelter on those shores; there is a city
Carthage by name, Phoenician in blood,
Less than a day from here, a massive port
Rich in supplies with which you can repair
Your damaged fleet, and soon reach Italy
Strong and intact.” The god inclined his head.
“And with that, son of Venus, I say once more
Smooth tides to you unto the fate in store.”
Great Neptune sank down, leaving a hole of foam;
A gentle wave slurped up against the hull
From where his mass returned down to the sea.
And so the Trojans rushed back to the oars.
...
Appendix
Optionally, add this at the end:
And with a pausing breath, the commander turned back
Setting his steps among them, but uprousing
With a starting sigh, a second speech:
“I will tell you I have seen
In my most auspicious dreams,
A marble island…a white peak
Of temples and palaces, monuments, crowning a city
With a great wall around it, a gate, and a guardhouse
With a slim tower, a vane, on which, high up,
Flies a red flag like Troy’s, Dardanian
No longer in location, but the soul
Remains the same, and the now-Latin spirit
Remains strong, by calamity unbowed.
Potential, and not promised: but only in dreams
Where the limits of our world release us
Can we at times see past the veiling fumes
Which time and space have set around our courses.
Whether this one lies or does foresage,
Having seen it, what else can we strive for?
Strength now. And if that strength take us there, so better,
If not, we’ll go strong to any end.
Patience now: the patience of a god
Who builds and sees all his creations wasted,
Speaks, yet must lament his words unheard,
But works, and through the breath of many ages
Sees what no one man could reach for done.
The work I speak of now takes many ages,
And each our breaths will fuel its reverend flame:
So may we sum to fan that spark alight
Which ever-tended, ever-burning, hearths
The central marble temple that I saw,
A Vestal shrine our own Palladium guards:
That civil flame: the soul, paternitas
Of Nova Troia, Neo-Ilion.
We’ll light the spark and die before the blaze.
Take to the oars, recaulk the hatches’ seals,
Raise prime our sails though tattered, and, amast,
Watchman, set signals to our sister ships:
We save those who survive from those far wrecks,
Take off, and by our muscle, in this calm,
Attempt toward fate which way the god has set,
Proof to a proven foe of our resolve.
Southwest from Sicily then. And so, tormented
By so much unutterable loss,
Homeless, shattered of fate, our task will be—
Our burden will be—not to reunite
With that which we once thought our fates would hold,
But, through tunnels from whose louring mouths
We flinched when we were whole, to find traverse
And by that underpassage exit into unimagined light.”