It is Odysseus who, having seen his rival Ajax brought down
by madness, equates a life on earth with nothing—all of it
illusion. The Greek camp lies rippling in front of him
with the latest slaughter, with a seeming addiction to rank,
stamina, the cleanest distance from shame possible, and
to a longing that at once is sexual and somewhere also
has to do with war as the context without which
value’s shape
becomes barely discernible. Three horses turn softly,
simultaneous, in the wind’s direction. A series of veils—
raised, and unraised: is this what it comes to, the examined life?
Must it? The drive toward meaning not, in fact, in the face of
meaninglessness, but of irrelevance—to have meant,
without mattering finally—that more palpable darkness,
magisterially unfurling its wings, then folding them equally around
the sleepers, the awake and restless, the freshly raped, the slain?