Defeat Poem by Joseph S. Josephides

When you see the word 'defeat' you lament,
you blame the others, you want to avenge,
or you surrender with apathy, holding up your hands.
Is your victory a jar pit of Danaides,
a bottomless toil? A labor in vain? Or is it
a fallacy to consider your defeat as a defeat?

Death is a defeat. How much beating it causes?
Leonidas, though dead in battlefield, he won a future life,
Hector eventually was not wiped by immortal Achilles,
the Combatant as Kouros dies in the name of virtue; *
the soul of a dead is living but many who live have lost it.

Count again the goal, the heaviness of your defeat,
there are victories that nail your feet onto the earth,
had a low level to overleap but we thought it was tall,
there are defeats which offer more than a drunkenness,
more than what a winner lost, when his victory slipped.

The leaves of autumn are flowers of another Spring,
when you fall, winged Eros takes you on a flight,
truth is not a ghost, she lives in you; so do touch her,
believe: defeating your defeat, you get a firm victory.


© Joseph S. Josephides


* Kyriakos Matsis. A hero of the Liberation Struggle of Cypriots,1955-59: The British General Marshal Mr.Harding attempted in 1956 to bribe Matsis to betray the Chief of Cyprus Fighters Grivas Digenis, and disclose the place he was hiding. He offered him half a million pounds - a huge sum at that time. Matsis answered to him: 'We fight not for money but for virtue.' Matsis also told soldiers under his command 'Do elect, in the best way you can, the way you will die... a nice death is the noblest act of life! '