All Day Permanent Red - Cristopher Logue

To welcome Hector to his death
God sent a rolling thunderclap across the sky
The city and the sea
      And momentarily—
The breezes playing with the sunlit dust—
On either slope a silence fell.

   Think of a raked sky-wide Venetian blind.
   Add the receding traction of its slats
   Of its slats of its slats as a hand draws it up.
   Hear the Greek army getting to its feet.
   
   Then of a stadium when many boards are raised
   And many faces change to one vast face.
   So, where there were so many masks,
   Now one Greek mask glittered from strip to ridge.
   Already swift
Boy Lutie took Prince Hector’s nod
And fired his whip that right and left