Odysseus

A poem is never finished, it is only abandoned. For now, i abandon Odysseus to the backwaters of my consciousness only to return to him a year or so from now. I am not unaware of the audacity of taking on such a project. Tennyson's Ulysses is without question one of the greatest lyrical poems in the English language. I am not trying to copy Tennyson. Nor am i copying him in writing yet another poem whose title is the same: Tiresias. My project is much larger overall, and will thus inevitably consists of unoriginal parts. But to my knowledge, the whole is entirely original. It just so happened that Odysseus came easiest to me after i'd already written Diomedes, and Diomedes so happened to come easiest after writing Helen--a poem which is not, in the same sort of way, a recreation of Sarah Teasdale's masterpiece. Yet again, it just so happened that Helen came easiest after writing Menelaus, a character who, if my research is right, no one has written a poem about--save a small piece by Rupert Brooke. Thus some parts are original and some not. Both Tiresias and Priam are on their way, and Achilles has at least one stanza nearly complete. Still many more will are to be added to the saga. If i were to rank the four i have Helen remains the best piece, if not my Magnum Opus. Diomedes and Odysseus are about the same in ranking, though for different reasons, and Menelaus is last, though, ironically, i think one of his stanzas is the best i've ever written. In any event, i hope you enjoy, i know i did.

Odysseus

Perhaps I’ll cast my spell on you,

Dangle some luck or slow down time,

Or strike a chime, or throw the die,

Or better still I'll sing a rhyme.

Takes some talent to make believable

Make believe, but pretend is what i do.

So what if i tell a half truth or the whole,

It matters little what’s actually true.

For have we not known gods in better moods,

Tinkering our way back to the shipyards?

Say Muse, say we were to harmonize with a

Dripping of blood drops, not some cacophonous bards:

Who’d believe wondering and wandering were the same,

Or home is the cause of home ‘cause my mother said so?

That happiness is a kind of growing used to death,

And death caused by the hoping come off the alpenglow?

I wade the threshold between shoal

And crowd—where waters tease the sand.

Between pallor and pith, sea and seeing,

And what no dull mortal can understand.

To play at theologian with the gods;

Esteem them rightly but know them wrongly,

Aghast at the words and sacred songs,

At last to feel what’s been felt strongly.

That they are a sham,

And that so am I,

And that still we count the bodies with same

Poise, the same pace, with which we stack them high.

That my life and the sunrise circuit strive on ‘mongst,

The spangled and glittering cadavers deranged,

And this ditty is but the pause between the first

And second twitching of a leg half rearranged.

Farewell! And farewell again!

The battle’s won a retreat!

Now beauty’s out there, lost in twilight,

Among the councils of stars replete.

The current of this man concurrent

With fickle winds and fickle kings.

The reckless oceans and the wide azure,

Is quiet, is home, is the thing of things.