Saturday, June 3, 2017

The Feet of Briseis, Princess of Lyernessus

Can a person be a fetish?
Achilles’s war prize, Briseis—
Achilles so wrathful
when Agamemnon took her for his own!—
and Homer says Briseis was unhappy too.
How did Achilles
feel about Briseis? If she
was his fetish,
it would prick him on in the thickest battle
to think of coming home to her.
Homer says the one who comforted Briseis 
in her captivity with Achilles
was Patroclus,
who hung out with Achilles’s other women,
and slept in Achilles’s own bed.