The Stars and the Cookie Jar

Around Aeneas, images of home:
men, battles, retreats. He looked and wept.
Greeks retreating from the Trojans' press,
Achilles' chariot and the white tents
of allies betrayed. Diomedes killed
them all, and drove their horses to the sea.
Here, hapless young Troilus met Achilles:
outmatched, no man yet, clinging to the reins
while his spears and his shoulders met the dust.
And this panel showed him, clear, the weeping
Trojan women, their long hair all unbound,
entreating Pallas, who turned her face away.
There was Hector, whose defiled body
Achilles dragged around the city walls.
Aeneas saw the victim, and the spoils;
he shed tears for his friend, and for Priam,
who stretched out his hands to beg back a corpse.
He saw himself, shield and helmet bright,
bringing down the best of the Achaeans;
he saw fiery, staunch Penthesilea,
bare-breasted, brave in war as any man,
a warrior-queen who'd led the host
of grim Amazons with sickle-moon shields.
Dardanian Aeneas stood enthralled,
gazing at past wonders, at memories.
Beautiful Dido approached the temple,
but he stared into the past, and he stood still.