War Music Quotes

“And Patroclus,
Shaking the voice out of his body, says:
‘Big mouth.
Remember it took three of you to kill me.
A god, a boy, and, last and least, a prince.
I can hear Death pronounce my name, and yet
Somehow it sounds like Hector.
And as I close my eyes I see Achilles’ face
With Death’s voice coming out of it.’

Saying these things Patroclus died.
And as his soul went through the sand
Hector withdrew his spear and said:
‘Perhaps.”
― Christopher Logue, War Music: An Account of Homer's Iliad

“Shame that your King is not so bound to you
As he is bound to what he sniffs. And bound to mute
The voice that hints, just hints, he might be, um . . .
Not wrong, of course, ah . . . how shall we put it -
A hair's-breadth less than absolutely right.

Here's the truth:
King Agamemnon is not honour bound.
Honour to Agamemnon is a thing
That he can pick, pick up, put back, pick up again,
A somesuch you might find beneath your bed.
Do not tell Agamemnon honour is
No mortal thing, but ever in creation,
Vital, free, like speed, like light,
Like silence, like the gods,
The movement of the stars! Beyond the stars!
Dividing man from beast, hero from host,
That proves best, best, that only death can reach,
Yet cannot die because it will be said, be sung,
Now, and in time to be, for evermore.”
― Christopher Logue, War Music: An Account of Homer's Iliad

“There is a kind of ocean wave
Whose origin remains obscure.
Such waves are solitary, and appear
Just off the cliff-line of Antarctica
Lifting the ocean's face into the wind,
Moistening the wind that pulls, and pulls them on,
Until their height (as trees), their width
(As continents), pace that wind north for 7,000 miles.

And now we see one! - like a stranger coast
Faring towards our own, and taste its breath,
And watch it whale, then whiten, then decay:
Whose rainbow thunder makes our spirits leap.”
― Christopher Logue, War Music: An Account of Homer's Iliad

“Long after midnight when you park, and stand
Just for a moment in the chromium wash,
Sometimes it seems that, some way off,
Between the river and the tower belt, say,
The roofs show black on pomegranate red
As if, below that line, they stood on fire.”
― Christopher Logue, War Music: An Account of Homer's Iliad

“You are not lost. You never shall be lost.”
― Christopher Logue, War Music: An Account of Homer's Iliad

“Picture the east Aegean sea by night,
And on a beach aslant its shimmering
Upwards of 50,000 men
Asleep like spoons beside their lethal Fleet.”
― Christopher Logue, War Music: An Account of Homer's Iliad

“Honour to Agamemnon is a thing / That he can pick, pick up, put back, pick up again, / A somesuch you might find beneath your bed.”
― Christopher Logue, War Music: An Account of Homer's Iliad