Iphigenia

The cold, white marble
Of one thousand ships set sailing
Of Ulysses, of Peleus’s markēd son
Of sieges, Cyclopes, lovers and false gifts
Does not depict the sea they sailed upon.
 
The cold, white marble
Does not display the ink that wrote their story
The blood that filled their seas, that filled their sails
And blew them eastward for an hopeless war
Where Hades reigns alone, and He prevails.
 
The cold, white marble
Dare not detail the truth of her young neck
Snatched from the sacred block, yet still to die
Commended and condemned as noble cause
To every youth who cannot hear her cry.