"The Crane-Pygmy War" by Robert Borski

The Crane-Pygmy War
Robert Borski

"The clamor of cranes goes high to the heavens, when the cranes escape the winter time and the rains unceasing and clamorously wing their way to streaming Ocean, bringing the Pygmy men bloodshed and destruction." Homer, Iliad 3.3

1.

We keep sharp eyes to the sky, post sentinels

in the marsh, where pink-gilled fish

swim in ever slower circles. If the birds dine here,

either before or after, their gullets will

flash and shiver with river poison.

The day is bright, with no clouds

to hide their approach.

Our spears dance with light. Uninvaded,

the swamp continues to twitter and tweep,

its beast chorus on alert.

Like us, when the blood runs free, they will

dine on war porridge

thickened with sweet viscera.

On the morrow, they will help us

boil the yellow unborn and make jokes

to scare away feathered ghosts

intent on vengeance.

Any war where you can eat the spoils

claim the elders, is not altogether bad.

Though little in size, we have big appetites.

2.

We keep sharp eyes to the ground.

We see the lazy fish, but fear the pinprick of arrows.

Below, undistanced, their spears wink like beads of starlight

and we hear their crepitating fear.

The long ancestral flight from Æthiop is nearly over.

Soon, their dead will yield up

the cracked skull-meat we will eat in victory, and we

will mate like eagles.

Then in a final storm of wings

we will take to the sky and evacuate

our bowels, fouling their huts of wattle

and reeds with black rain.

Though creatures of air and spirit, we are

not above small acts of desecration.

3.

Besieged by the sharp-beaked birds

we fight like small giants -- even

our children partake in the conflict,

running in to slash

at the brown stalks of their legs

with opalescent shards of clam.

Now there are one-legged

cranes everywhere, hopping

about like a contagion

of tall fluttering white toads.

Soon enough the mud is stained

with blood, replicating the First Womb,

but no new progeny

of little people pours forth

to help with the battle. Today, it seems,

we fight not for the past, but our future,

and the dreams of our grandchildren's

grandchildren.

All through the long afternoon,

our throats continue to make rallying

cries of war, but our hearts

are sore from seeing

so many of our friends and families

lying face-down in the water

like broken lilies.

4.

For little people they have

sizeable amounts of courage,

but it is still not enough to defeat

the feathered sons and daughters of Oinöe,

their former queen.

All through the campaign we dance

in and out of their ranks,

darting like our brothers, the kraits,

skewering the dark-limbed morsels

while they still pulse with life,

then swallowing them like frogs.

Though the opal talons of their children

continue to menace, we are

used to standing at the water's

edge, fishing on single legs

just as many shattered Styx-bound

veterans learn to do.

Our bloody wings are not stigmata.

Maimed or not, we remain soldiers.

5.

At the end of the day

only one of each tribe is left to parley

concessions.

Acknowledge defeat and you will

yet live, says the crane

with its scissors-bill.

You should die of shame

with words like that in your mouth,

responds the little man. I will

fight for my people until the moon

falls out of the sky.

Both are more tired than they

care to admit, even to their secret

warrior selves, while

all about them ruby ghosts

are beginning to congeal

in the night air like fog,

eager to rejoin the fray,

if with nothing other than shrieks

and hair-pulls of encouragement.

But which is more stubborn, pygmy or crane?

Who will set aside his enmity

for one last chance at truce?

Only the watching moon ever learns, not we.

Poet’s Notes:  In every poem I write, I try and do my best to come up with at least one or two turns of phrase that I hope will make the reader smile or gasp:  a well-crafted simile or beautiful metaphor; a series of fantastical, horrific, or SFnal images; whatever--as long as the words that wind up on the page are fresh and original. Thus my overall intent with "The Crane-Pygmy War." To take a relatively minor event from Greek Mythology (which I've loved ever since 1958 when the movie Hercules starring Steve Reeves came out) and to endow it with as much heightened language as possible and make it sing. 

No, it's not Homer; but I do hope when you read it you can hear and see the fluttering of wings and brave defense of little men as pygmy and crane engage each other in a battle for their lives.

Editor’s Note:  I particularly enjoy the epic, Homerian style and themes as well as the back-and-forth shifts in perspective between one party and the other.  The poem feels like a tantalizing fragment of a larger work from a lost translation of Ovid.  "The Crane-Pygmy War" first appeared in the April 2014 issue of Songs of Eretz Poetry E-zine.