Two Poems: Haethcyn and Herebeald & Orpheus and Eurydice

The first work included in Two Poems by Alejandro Mark Amiama, Haethcyn and Herebeald, A Soldier’s Song, is an epic composed of approximately ten thousand hendecasyllabic lines. It is an original fictional prophecy whose subject is western imperial expansion into sovereign nations of the Near and Middle East. Narrated by the dying soldier, Herebeald, this soliloquy ventures to reflect upon the transcendent themes of love and innocence, devotion to duty, and betrayal and mortality moments before his untimely death amid the egregious campaign of conquest and occupation spurred on by his brother, the megalomaniacal tyrant, Haethcyn. The second of the poems is The Tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, a modern, blank verse retelling of the ancient Greek tragedy.