The Second Slaughter

The Second Slaughter¹
Lucia Perillo

Achilles slays² the man who slew³ his friend, pierces the corpse⁴
 behind the heels and drags it
 behind his chariot（二轮战车） like the cans that trail
 a bride and groom⁵. Then he lays out
 a banquet（宴会） for his men, oxen and goats
 and pigs and sheep; the soldiers eat
 until a greasy⁶ moonbeam lights their beards.

The first slaughter is for victory, but the second slaughter is for grief—
 in the morning more animals must be killed
 for burning with the body of the friend. But Achilles finds
 no consolation⁷ in the hiss⁸ and crackle（裂纹） of their fat;
 not even heaving four stallions on the pyre（火葬用的柴堆） 
 can lift the ballast of his sorrow.

And here I turn my back on the epic⁹ hero—the one who slits¹⁰
 the throats of his friend's dogs,
 killing what the loved one loved
 to reverse the polarity of grief. Let him repent¹¹
 by vanishing from my concern
 after he throws the dogs onto the fire.
 The singed¹² fur makes the air too difficult to breathe.

When the oil wells of Persia burned I did not weep
 until I heard about the birds, the long-legged ones especially
 which I imagined to be scarlet¹³, with crests¹⁴ like egrets
 and tails like peacocks, covered in tar¹⁵
 weighting the feathers they dragged through black shallows
 at the rim¹⁶ of the marsh¹⁷. But once

I told this to a man who said I was inhuman¹⁸, for giving animals
 my first lament¹⁹（哀悼） . So now I guard
 my inhumanity like the jackal
 who appears behind the army base at dusk,
 come there for scraps²⁰ with his head lowered
 in a posture²¹ that looks like appeasement（缓和，平息） 
 though it is not.