On the stage
Achilles there before me,
Theatre fading into dark space.
Alone now always
I hear all voices,
Bell-like clarity
Penetrates my ears,
Even whispers
Along the edge,
And I walk in Hades
Too when Odysseus
Comes, still breathing,
To ask his comrade
In arms how it is
To be a shade.
It is better, says he,
To be the meanest slave
On the poorest farm
But yet alive. Achilles,
Pathetic in his useless
Strong body, speaks,
Then goes,
Helpless to return,
His time in the underworld
Set at forever.
There in my seat
I long to touch your hand.
Bettie Anne Doebler is retired from many years of teaching English. She now devotes herself to writing poetry. Thirty of her poems have been published in a book, Book of the Mermaid, and in 1994 she published a book of literary criticism, "Rooted Sorrow:" Dying in Early Modern England. She has suffered from strains of depression, both in her family of birth and her own close family, particularly with the suicides of her daughter and her husband.