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i.m. Mick Imlah

They gathered for the foot-race: first Euryalus
and Nisus, friends from their early childhood.
Euryalus was young and handsome: Nisus,
devoted to him with no thought for himself.
All line up, and, at the starter’s shout,
they’re off, streaming onward like a fleeting cloud,
eyes on the finish-line. Nisus takes the lead,
forging ahead, like the wind, faster than lightning.
Next, but a good way back, comes Salius,
and after him Euryalus, keeping in touch.                                      10
Then Helymus of Sicily, and on his heels
the Trojan Diores, shoulder thrust forward;
if the course had been ten yards more, he’d have passed
Helymus, left him for dead.
                                            Exhausted,
they’re near the end, when the unlucky Nisus
slips on the blood, shed at the sacrifice
and soaking the close-cut grass. All ready
to exult and take the crowd’s acclaim,
he skids on the treacherous surface,
loses his balance and crashes face down                                      20
on the gruesome blood-steeped race-track.
But still he won’t forget the bonds of love;
reaching up, he impedes Salius
who also tumbles on to the blood-caked sand.
Euryalus flashes by. Through the intervention
of his fallen friend, he is leading. And soon
he has won, cheered on by fanatical applause.
Salius shouts his anguish at the judges
and to the whole stadium, protesting
that he’s been robbed of victory by a foul.                                   30
But noone cares about him; Euryalus
has won the hearts of everyone
with his strength and grace, and by the sympathy
his tears provoke: by the power of his youth
just now coming into its own, and made
all the more appealing by his beauty.

One dark night, later on, the two of them
raided the enemy camp and hacked
the heads from the Rutulian leaders.
Euryalus dressed up in foreign clothes                                          40
and put on a shining helmet. The light
glinting from it revealed him. Nisus, hearing
the outcry, doubles back to help him.
But they’re doomed. Volcens kills Euryalus,
and Nisus kills him in vengeance.
And then they are all on top of him:
all of them fighting against Nisus on his own
until he lies dead, stretched on Euryalus’s body.

(Aeneid, Books 5 and 9)