War Music

A remarkable hybrid of translation, adaptation, and invention Picture the east Aegean sea by night, And on a beach aslant its shimmering Upwards of 50,000 men Asleep like spoons beside their lethal Fleet. “Your life at every instant up for— / Gone. / And, candidly, who gives a toss? / Your heart beats strong. Your spirit grips,” writes Christopher Logue in his original version of Homer’s Iliad , the uncanny “translation of translations” that won ecstatic and unparalleled acclaim as “the best tra