If Life Were So Simple Poem by Michael Pruchnicki

I thought in those final moments

if I had studied harder and learned
all the intricate declensions of Latin
if my parents had acquired the wealth
to send me to a proper university
if my grandparents had left
the old country in time
if my inclination to speak
up in resentment and bile
had been restrained
perhaps this dismal death
on a distant battlefield
might have been avoided

but then I never would
have become Achilles