The Builders
Come up and take them. –Leonidas, king of Sparta, when asked by the Persian emperor to lay down his arms. Battle of Thermopylae, 480 B.C.The gate was almost finished. In those thirsty hours, a taut rack of earth we raised With much labor. We packed the soil with shield-butts. Waist deep in horse-flies, we stretched our lances— Protean, slender bronze. Our cloaks were red and wet, The air was old and saline by the end. The foreman raised the cry. At once we Scaled the mound and set a fence: women’s heads, Serpents, chariot wheels, lion’s faces. Another word and circling, avian spearpoints Dropped tight against the wall. Boredom, thighs tensed and rigid, moans of effort We dredged the final draught of strength And drew a thread of red gold on the blackness of the pass. An ox of silk and silver approached to test The man-stones of our house. Impact. The charge shook the centre of the line, Bending the façade back, but this defect Was long planned by Leonidas, mason, master architect of war. Our founded sandals took the strain, and each workingman, Cuirass cushioned by his own mane of hair, pushed. The ox impaled its trunk on fatal, burnished bronze And bellowed. Our enemy’s boast of deathlessness We parlayed down with lizard-killing backhands. … A thousand leagues away, my daughter bides her time Lays a hand on the table And opens her palm with a line of blue flint and the sound of ripping sailcloth. … Envoi. We were what we did. Go, stranger, and say that Lacedaemon lines are clear. Go, and say that ruled and parsed law endures. Go, go quickly. I fear the thunderbirds of Ahura Mazda. Their flight will dim the blazing white of day.
—Gabriel Olearnik
Gabriel Olearnik studied medieval history at University College
London. He is currently an attorney and practices corporate law.
