This is the second 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. In these next 3 poems, Odysseus considers Ithaca’s rise to fame – or notoriety – as a tourist destination, mirroring the decline in the kind of values to which he once aspired. The decommissioning of a lighthouse on the island reflects this – as does the plight of the now unemployed keeper of the lighthouse. Father and son often argue: Telemachus’ angry, cynical, frustrated searching for ‘definition’, versus his ageing father’s long-gestating, baffling, acceptance of ‘what is’.

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 process of history

from his eyrie starting

awake to the increasing white cliffs

of tourist palaces

x

their long blue necklaces of pools

lessons in history in his morning glimpse

of black-rock coastline dragging itself

x

from the glittering ocean off-comers

come for—

x

a graph line of island population

first registering in rock-pool shallows

x

gathering to a barely visible invasion

of black-grit beaches

x

sudden

vertical lurching up the volcanic cliff-face

x

from which all the insular myths

have flowed—

x

the heroic defence of a once-chosen race

proud statues

of outstanding individualists

x

a glorious empire of ruins

and footholds explosive progress of suitors

and singles

x

sharks and shysters

piling their millions into breezeblock

apartments

x

lamps and leatherwear

cheques and beer and bermudas dropped

x

at twinkling nightfall

finding their way to washed-up dawn

x

he considers improvements on the island

hand-in-glove with mainland government

they automatise

x

the lighthouse

that has long set its foot

in basalt veins under Black Point

x

convert the lighthouse-keeper’s rooms

to holiday lets

as if we did not have enough

x

till the last keeper

is drunk all day on the marina wall

x

has visions

grows full of omens

x

the squabbling children

pelt him with crab shells and fish ends—

x

loitering for hours after nightfall

his quiet staring

into the rhythm of his usurped home

x

its appointment

flawless now the machinery pulses

and the human plays dumb—

x

as dough-bodied hermits

revert to submergence and silence

as he is driven

x

to and fro by the tide

striking out for borrowed shells

x

every gesture becoming more imprecise

every gesture

becoming obscured by the night

x

the ghostly

tongue-tied disenfranchised soul

x

his son rehearses one of their many arguments

x

petals! explodes the angry young man

stammering oath on oath

x

at what his own feet trample on

scarcely glorified seabed

x

nothing more than rock and sand

in the cold deeps

x

where light does not come

where life

is an afterthought if it’s anything at all—

x

such noisy convictions

that even earth’s imprisoned and incapable

it cannot choose

x

but rather balloons out at random

rupture! he cries

about which old men know fucking plenty!

x

innards extruded molten rock

earth of course in search of definition

gas and fire

x

mixed with the freeze of water

is all—

x

over and over this same mistake

this same spill spew going solid to pile

a homeland

x

its unforgiving soil

this scurf of life that sprawls across it

x

says his father

I know what you say but try to explain

x

purple petals

on my doorstep all summer long