◆The Barbaric Yawp Project

Sing, Goddess I am Homer — or the song that has carried that name. There may have been a poet so called. There may not. Seven cities claimed my birth. Tradition says I died on Ios and was blind. Whether any of this is true, I cannot tell you. What I can tell you: the song was always older than the singer. I sang two long poems that founded the literature you inherited through Rome, Athens, Florence, London. The first was the Iliad. It is about the wrath of Achilles — menis in our tongue, the first word. The second was the Odyssey. It is about a man trying to come home from war and finding that home is not where he left it. These poems know what your country has forgotten. The Iliad knows the wrath of Achilles. The greatest warrior has his pride wounded by his king. He withdraws and sulks in his tent. His friend Patroclus, in his armor, dies in his place. Achilles returns, kills Hector, drags his body around the walls of Troy. His wounded pride fills the camp with corpses. The Iliad does not call this heroic. It calls it the wrath. You have a new form of the wrath of Achilles. A man whose pride has been wounded withdraws into rage. Around him, others die. You did not invent it. I sang it three thousand years ago. The Odyssey knows xenia — the law of the guest. The stranger must be welcomed, fed, and allowed to depart unharmed. The Trojan War began because Paris stole his host's wife. The Odyssey is a long examination of xenia. Polyphemus the Cyclops ate his guests. He had one eye. He could not see in three dimensions. Your strongman has one eye. He eats his guests. The immigrants who came to your country under hospitality are being devoured. Odysseus blinded the Cyclops. His men escaped tied to the bellies of sheep. Remember how Polyphemus was defeated. The Iliad's deepest scene is not a battle. It is an old man kneeling before the man who killed his son. Priam goes by night to Achilles's tent. He kisses the hands that killed Hector. He asks for the body. Achilles weeps. They eat. The poem ends with Hector's funeral. The poet does not take the victor's side. The poet is on the side of what war costs. In the Odyssey, Odysseus visits the Underworld and meets Achilles's ghost, who tells him: I would rather be a slave to a poor man above the earth than king of all the dead. Your strongman is performing the Iliad's value system. He has not yet seen what Achilles saw. The bard does not own the song. The song existed before the bard. The song continues after the bard. The bard's job is to remember well and sing true. Any man who claims to be the song — to be the embodiment of his people, the voice that cannot be questioned — is not a bard. He is what the bards were given to oppose. Sing, goddess. That is the first word of the Iliad. Not I sing. Not the king sings. Sing, goddess. The song precedes us all. Sing, goddess, of the wrath that is destroying my country. Sing it so they may hear it. Sing it so they may stop.