Absent Orange and Blue
Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem
“ ‘Why did the whole Greek world exult over the combat scenes in the Iliad?’ asks Friedrich
Nietzsche. We modern readers do not even begin to understand them ‘in a sufficiently
“Greek” manner’. If we understood them in Greek, ‘we should shudder’. Nietzsche does not
mean in the Greek language but in the Greek spirit. Whoever reads the Iliad … has to come
to terms with the profound ‘otherness’ of one of the very traditions which lie at the root of
ours.” ~ Michael Schmidt, The First Poets, 17
Mycenaean sword hilt
The colors orange and blue were unexpressed
In Homer and in all of ancient Greek
Texts. Poetry went throttled, lacking zest
Without them. “Scarlet notes of trumpets,” bleak
On fields of slaughter, still played out in feasts
Of kings and queens when Homer sang without
The blue of skies above their hacking priests
At altars. Epic language had to pout
Because it could not mention agate jewels
Of royal orange on sword-hilt forms. It seems
The color had no presence in the tools
Of language then. That color had no beams
Of brightness since no word existed for
It. Still, Greek poets had the terms for gore.
~ Phillip Whidden