The Shield of Achilles
W. H. Auden

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    She looked over his shoulder
   	   For vines and olive trees,
     Marble well-governed cities
   	   And ships upon untamed seas,
     But there on the shining metal
   	   His hands had put instead
     An artificial wilderness
   	   And a sky like lead.

A plain without a feature, bare and brown,
   No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood,
Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down, 
   Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood
   An unintelligible multitude,
A million eyes, a million boots in line, 
Without expression, waiting for a sign.

Out of the air a voice without a face
   Proved by statistics that some cause was just
In tones as dry and level as the place:
   No one was cheered and nothing was discussed;
   Column by column in a cloud of dust
They marched away enduring a belief
Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief.

     She looked over his shoulder
   	   For ritual pieties,
     White flower-garlanded heifers,
   	   Libation and sacrifice,
     But there on the shining metal
   	   Where the altar should have been,
     She saw by his flickering forge-light
   	   Quite another scene.

Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot
   Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke)
And sentries sweated for the day was hot:
   A crowd of ordinary decent folk
   Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke
As three pale figures were led forth and bound
To three posts driven upright in the ground.

The mass and majesty of this world, all
   That carries weight and always weighs the same
Lay in the hands of others; they were small
   And could not hope for help and no help came:
   What their foes like to do was done, their shame
Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride
And died as men before their bodies died.

     She looked over his shoulder
   	   For athletes at their games,
     Men and women in a dance
   	   Moving their sweet limbs
     Quick, quick, to music,
   	   But there on the shining shield
     His hands had set no dancing-floor
   	   But a weed-choked field.

A ragged urchin, aimless and alone, 
   Loitered about that vacancy; a bird
Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone:
   That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,
   Were axioms to him, who'd never heard
Of any world where promises were kept,
Or one could weep because another wept.

     The thin-lipped armorer,
   	   Hephaestos, hobbled away,
     Thetis of the shining breasts
   	   Cried out in dismay
     At what the god had wrought
   	   To please her son, the strong
     Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles
   	   Who would not live long.