  Background Music: Erasure, "Star" The new urlLink Poet Laureate is Louise Glück. This poem is too amazing.
I'd cut off a finger to be able to write like this! If you know me at all, you know what I mean. "The Triumph of Achilles" In the story of Patroclus no one survives, not even Achilles who was nearly a god.
Patroclus resembled him; they wore the same armor. Always in these friendships one serves the other, one is less than the other: the hierarchy is always apparent, though the legends cannot be trusted-- their source is the survivor, the one who has been abandoned. What were the Greek ships on fire compared to this loss? In his tent, Achilles grieved with his whole being and the gods saw he was a man already dead, a victim of the part that loved, the part that was mortal. 
