This is the fifth – and final – instalment of groups of 3 poems selected from my 2010 sequence of poems which takes Homer’s The Odyssey as its starting point. The full sequence of 22 poems first appeared in Hurt (Enitharmon Press). I have written about the development of the sequence in an earlier blog post here. The first 3 poems can be read here. The second 3 poems can be read here. The third 3 poems can be read here. The fourth 3 poems can be read here. In these concluding 3 poems, Odysseus catches sight – on the street – of a woman he used to love, who left him, who hurt him. Telemachus’s own erotic encounters with women never come to anything, yielding for him only further frustration and unanswerable questions. In Homer’s The Odyssey, Teiresias tells Odysseus, after he has killed the suitors, to continue on his travels, but this time to head inland, carrying an oar, in search of a people who know nothing of the sea.

from Essays in Island Logic

‘Same sea, same dangers waiting for him / As though he had got nowhere but older’ – W.S. Merwin – ‘Odysseus’

he considers the longevity of love

beside the plash of blue fountains

fronting the Paradise Hotel

x

the shade-end of Flamboyant Street

he glimpses

x

her unfashionable blonde

medium-cut not prison-razored or wrapped

x

not seen folded

to the clipped déshabillé the younger girls

begin to favour these days—

x

her body thickened

more severe in the black business suit

x

but the long swing of the left hand hers

pale strands

on the nape of the neck hers

x

hers that bold

address to the world’s sunny littoral

x

to the sunlit corner

beyond the blue of tumbling water

where now he is able to own the hurt—

x

no finer test

nor anything less than what his old self

would put to the sword

x

no more than the heart’s bloody rent

she made of him

x

the gaping wound surviving still

restless in its stony bed

x

man’s glittering and impassive ocean

to woman’s cold moon

x

his son finds himself looking at the moon

obscured by the flashing Bar Promo sign

the crescent moon

x

the night they met

x

the boy then with no thought of light

only gravity

her beauty as it drew him

x

across the dull universe of Tuesday night

the Place of Our Sacred Lady—

x

her glance across the tables

full of milky

outspokenness the whites of her eyes

x

the glossy black reserve in her pupil

those pale perfect breasts

his goal

x

in the ease of which he would find time

to reflect

on the nature the allure of such goals—

x

until the following Sunday evening

when they have outstripped

a whole series of unremarkable love songs

x

once more he walks

far out beyond the marina lights

x

once more to wrestle

with whether it’s the moon must envy

his agitation and immobility

x

or whether

it is he who must envy the moon’s

serenity

x

and slow movement

x

he fails to grasp good advice

what passes for gods have not finished

with him yet

x

says one in the bar

who had things gone better

should by rights have been forgotten—

x

when you think you are done

there is still further to go

with something across your shoulder

x

you are not sure is not a gun

because you find yourself

x

travelling amongst people

who know nothing of the sea

x

who eat no salt

who have not seen a ship’s purple sails

nor the long oars that drive them—

x

they ask

what is this something-something

across your shoulder

x

suggesting you lay it down

lay it right here

that you perform what rituals you recall

x

then perhaps if things had gone better

had this love

this hurt even the bright wind’s shifting

x

this dream this joy

at the glittering brink of sight

where the sea-rise sways

x

to bring in another

this next of catches

from the salt’s sharp throat