This is the first 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. In these 3 poems, Odysseus, now an old man, walks the Ithacan landscape in search of an old grave stele he recalls as presenting an heroic image of a young fighting man, only to find the passage of time has changed his view of it. Meanwhile, Telemachus is still searching for opportunities to prove his own idealistic, militaristic, heroism in service to a clear-cut purpose (that he has yet to discover). Penelope dreams (again) of her own childhood, her husband appearing suddenly as an eagle, intent on marrying her, changing her life forever.

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 passage of time

old man walking retirement

x

up the hillside below the pine belts

past centuries-old spilled

x

sarcophagi looking

to recover one particular grave stele—

this

x

sure as he can be

this one under a triangular pediment

the young man leaning back in bas relief

x

such a contemporary slouch

legs crossed at the ankles hips thrust out

in contemplation

x

a warrior’s helmet held at arm’s length

its long plume

x

like a lion’s tail

seeming about to respond to his ambitious

x

nature his searching

out the end of all complexity—

x

he sees now the boy’s had his forehead

chipped off

the kid is brainless and beautiful

x

about second century BC

marking the grave of a dead warrior

x

an old man all but forgotten

after dusk

x

walking retirement down the dark hillside

bringing it to the surf’s edge now

x

like a child

x

his son wakes and wanders round the house

stirring in the small of night

x

the boy raises himself to a gluey throat

fattened lips

x

feels his way

downstairs to the unlit kitchen

x

to be surprised by the winking of lights

like campfire signs

wasteful stand-bys burning

x

on the distant hillsides

of radio microwave fridge and oven—

x

leans into polished taps

knocks back glass after re-hydrating glass

x

dregs of last night’s beer

incline him to hear the muttering of troops

x

on the dark flanks of hills

x

the clank of billies scouring of blade edges

a vastness of purpose

drawing up the life he never possessed—

x

knows he would have been astute

clear-headed then

consulted through the terrific nights

x

by faithful generals

who’d hymn his black ferocity

x

his desire for the acid tests of dawn

that will never come

but the obscurities of blame

x

upstairs his father singing in his sheets

dull as new-born

x

his wife is restless in her sleep

a girl once again shepherding the flock

of twenty geese

x

like pets she lords it over them

a pack of baying dogs

x

showing pale against dark volcanic soil

waddling from the round pond

x

on her father’s farm

crowding to eat the grain she lends them

x

till eagle cruelty with steely talons

sweeps out of a sky

apparently twenty years deep—

x

feathers

explosive as when white cherry blossom

is ripped by the wind

x

a blur of wing white/black failing

x

she screams wrestling to beat

the bird off in vain

her flock a shredded bloodied mattress—

x

imperious eagle on the rooftree

x

tilting its eye to ocean distance

into blue ocean

it’s me your husband come to set you free

x

her sphere of influence diminished

twenty-fold

x

but continues to be grateful

touching heaviness in her right breast

cannot recall

x

how many times she has dreamed this