Achilles' Shield

From Atrios, a W.H. Auden poem that I'd never heard. And it. is. TEH. AWESOME! Seems to be a reversal of the Achilles' Shield image in Book 18 - instead of depicting on the shield a tableau of Greek society, this image reveals the destruction of society and morality when it turns its energies to war. The stanzas with shorter lines are Thetis looking over Hephaestus' shoulder expecting the images Homer described, but the longer lines describe what H. placed there -- images of war. She weeps at the end.

The opening:

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.

Assign this next Iliad class.