The Oxen's Yoke
after Homer
As when the oxen, worn by labor, their shoulders grooved by the yoke’s relentless pressure, stand spent, their eyes cast down, their coats matted with sweat and dust, so too the warriors, their armor battered, their swords worn, their hearts heavy, stand at the city’s gate, their will to fight, like the oxen’s strength, slowly waning,
their thoughts, like the oxen’s gaze, fixed on the distant fields, where they once tilled the earth, and the memories of loved ones, now taunt them, like the goad’s sharp prick, urging them forward, into the fray, where death and glory wait, like the yoke, inevitable,
and the earth, indifferent, receives the blood, and the cries, and the dying light, of another day, lost in the siege, like the oxen’s tracks, in the dusty field
I drew from Homer's focus on the human cost of war and his use of extended similes, as seen in the comparison of the warriors to the oxen. I aimed to capture the gritty, concrete details of war, as Homer would have