Achilles & Patroclus

Your poverty is not exactly mine

Long journeys do not always yield progress

Your world looks warm and your smiles define

The immunity of youth to distress

Of a kind that only time can create

How green your land is, like my ignorance

Of what you dream and say and whom you hate

Words and images do a charming dance

Smells you recognize like your family

Would be hostile strangers in my nostrils

Your faith has a dangerous gravity

Fortresses can create prison morals

Will your work be more joyful than my own?

Will just the right human appear for you?

What will grow now that your friendship is sown?

Will you change, or will the others change you?

You could be Achilles and Patroclus

Or everyone we’re not, or all of us