“At Ithaca”
by HD (Hilda Doolittle) Over and back, the long waves crawl and track the sand with foam; night darkens, and the sea takes on that desperate tone of dark that wives put on when all their love is done. Over and back, the tangled thread falls slack, over and up and on; over and all is sewn; now while I bind the end, I wish some fiery friend would sweep impetuously these fingers from the loom. My weary thoughts play traitor to my soul, just as the toil is over; swift while the woof is whole, turn now, my spirit, swift, and tear the pattern there, the flowers so deftly wrought, the borders of sea blue, the sea-blue coast of home. The web was over-fair, that web of pictures there, enchantments that I thought he had, that I had lost; weaving his happiness within the stitching frame, weaving his fire and frame, I thought my work was done, I prayed that only one of those that I had spurned might stoop and conquer this long waiting with a kiss. But each time that I see my work so beautifully inwoven and would keep
the picture and the whole, Athene steels my soul. Slanting across my brain, I see as shafts of rain his chariot and his shafts, I see the arrows fall, I see the lord who moves like Hector lord of love, I see him matched with fair bright rivals, and I see those lesser rivals flee.
(excerpt from) “Circe: by Margaret Atwood
Mud Poems”
I made no choice I decided nothing One day you simply appeared in your stupid boat, your killer’s hands, your disjointed body, jagged as a shipwreck, skinny-ribbed, blue-eyed, scorched, thirsty, the usual, pretending to be — what? a survivor? Those who say they want nothing want everything. It was not this greed that offended me, it was the lies. Nevertheless I gave you the food you demanded for the journey you said you planned; but you planned no journey and we both knew it. You’ve fallen for that, you made the right decision. The trees bend in the wind, you eat, you rest, you think of nothing, your mind, you say, is like your hands, vacant: vacant is not innocent.
“Odysseus’ Decision”
by Louise Glück The great man turns his back on the island. Now he will not die in paradise nor hear again the lutes of paradise among the olive trees, by the clear pools under the cypresses. Time begins now, in which he hears again that pulse which is the narrative sea, at dawn when its pull is strongest. What has brought us here will lead us away; our ship sways in the tined harbor water. Now the spell is ended. Give him back his life, sea that can only move forward.
“Penelope’s Song”
by Louise Glück Little soul, little perpetually undressed one, do now as I bid you, climb the shelf-like branches of the spruce tree; wait at the top, attentive, like a sentry or look-out. He will be home soon; it behooves you to be generous. You have not been completely perfect either; with your troublesome body you have done things you shouldn't discuss in poems. Therefore call out to him over the open water, over the bright water with your dark song, with your grasping, unnatural song—passionate, like Maria Callas. Who wouldn't want you? Whose most demonic appetite could you possibly fail to answer? Soon he will return from wherever he goes in the meantime, suntanned from his time away, wanting his grilled chicken. Ah, you must greet him, you must shake the boughs of the tree to get his attention, but carefully, carefully, lest his beautiful face be marred by too many falling needles.
“Circe’s Grief”
by Louise Glück In the end, I made myself known to your wife as a god would, in her own house, in Ithaca, a voice without a body: she paused in her weaving, her head turning first to the right, then left though it was hopeless of course to trace that sound to any objective source: I doubt she will return to her loom with what she knows now. When you see her again, tell her this is how a god says goodbye: if I am in her head forever I am in your life forever.
“Circe’s Power”
by Louise Glück I never turned anyone into a pig. Some people are pigs; I make them look like pigs. I'm sick of your world that lets the outside disguise the inside. Your men weren't bad men; undisciplined life did that to them. As pigs, under the care of me and my ladies, they sweetened right up. Then I reversed the spell, showing you my goodness as well as my power. I saw we could be happy here, as men and women are when their needs are simple. In the same breath, I foresaw your departure, your men with my help braving the crying and pounding sea. You think a few tears upset me? My friend, every sorceress is a pragmatist at heart; nobody sees essence who can't face limitation. If I wanted only to hold you I could hold you prisoner.
“Circe’s Torment”
by Louise Glück I regret bitterly the years of loving you in both your presence and absence, regret the law, the vocation that forbid me to keep you, the sea a sheet of glass, the sun-bleached beauty of the Greek ships: how could I have power if I had no wish to transform you: as you loved my body, as you found there passion we held above all other gifts, in that single moment over honor and hope, over loyalty, in the name of that bond I refuse you such feeling for your wife as will let you rest with her, I refuse you sleep again if I cannot have you.
“Odysseus”
by W.S. Merwin For George Kirstein Always the setting forth was the same, Same sea, same dangers waiting for him As though he had got nowhere but older. Behind him on the receding shore The identical reproaches, and somewhere Out before him, the unraveling patience He was wedded to. There were the islands Each with its woman and twining welcome To be navigated, and one to call "home." The knowledge of all that he betrayed Grew till it was the same whether he stayed Or went. Therefore he went. And what wonder If sometimes he could not remember Which was the one who wished on his departure Perils that he could never sail through, And which, improbable, remote, and true, Was the one he kept sailing home to?
“The Art of Poetry”
by Jorge Luis Borges To gaze at a river made of time and water And remember Time is another river. To know we stray like a river and our faces vanish like water. To feel that waking is another dream that dreams of not dreaming and that the death we fear in our bones is the death that every night we call a dream. To see in every day and year a symbol of all the days of man and his years, and convert the outrage of the years into a music, a sound, and a symbol. To see in death a dream, in the sunset a golden sadness--such is poetry, humble and immortal, poetry, returning, like dawn and the sunset. Sometimes at evening there's a face that sees us from the deeps of a mirror. Art must be that sort of mirror, disclosing to each of us his face. They say Ulysses, wearied of wonders, wept with love on seeing Ithaca, humble and green. Art is that Ithaca, a green eternity, not wonders. Art is endless like a river flowing, passing, yet remaining, a mirror to the same inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same and yet another, like the river flowing.
“Odysseus to Telemachus”
by Joseph Brodsky My dear Telemachus, The Trojan War is over now; I don't recall who won it. The Greeks, no doubt, for only they would leave so many dead so far from their own homeland. But still, my homeward way has proved too long. While we were wasting time there, old Poseidon, it almost seems, stretched and extended space. I don't know where I am or what this place can be. It would appear some filthy island, with bushes, buildings, and great grunting pigs. A garden choked with weeds; some queen or other. Grass and huge stones . . . Telemachus, my son! To a wanderer the faces of all islands resemble one another. And the mind trips, numbering waves; eyes, sore from sea horizons, run; and the flesh of water stuffs the ears. I can't remember how the war came out; even how old you are--I can't remember. Grow up, then, my Telemachus, grow strong. Only the gods know if we'll see each other again. You've long since ceased to be that babe before whom I reined in the plowing bullocks. Had it not been for Palamedes' trick we two would still be living in one household. But maybe he was right; away from me you are quite safe from all Oedipal passions, and your dreams, my Telemachus, are blameless.
“The Odyssey or ‘On Absence’”
by Chimako Tada, translated by Naoshi Koriyama and Edward Lueders 1 You, Odysseus trainer of the wooden horse of pleasure you made your wife swoon in ecstasy with the ardor of your breath when the shadowy warriors jumped every night from the broken sides of the wooden horse Troy burned in the name of Penelope You who started home a long time ago wearing around your neck ornaments of the dead gods killed by fire you were always on the waves always in the shade of rocks Did that seashell dissolve in the clear acid sea and the bittersweet pearl in the shell too Is Ithaca still swaying on your brow like a distant star Is the small island still on your tongue surrounded by bubbles not dissolved in the sour saliva on your broad warm tongue 2 The son grew up perched on the tallest treetop on the island looking out over the open sea Every ship could be the Royal one bearing his absent father the god who did not even have to exist in order to rule In an angelic moment Telemachus flew through the sky alighting on the mast of a ship on the sea Oh how much like his thoughtful father the rising grey beard of the cresting wave The mast abruptly tilts like a scale that has lost its balance When someday Odysseus returns his son will for the first time doubt his father’s presence He will fall like a live bird with its wings torn off But now by the flowing current bringing along the seasons by all the silver fish living in the sea every ship could be that Royal one bearing his absent father
3 In the lonely womb—the warm water clock— your wife crushes grapes one by one trickling the juice into the empty space thereby she is gradually relieved of weight During the long years of absence the clusters of grapes have all been crushed and Penelope is no longer even a woman In her hands worn out in the act of waiting the thread will snap one day the spindle that has been turning will stop and you will appear out of the shade of the rocks a man who is husband father and king white hair streaming over your face like the crest of a breaking wave The suitors will recede muttering like the ebb tide With doubtful wondering eyes she will look at you from silence as wide and white as her sandy beach in sunlight as thick as swarming flies at Odysseus no longer the hero of the tale 4 The slaughter is finished Let us have music The uninvited are all murdered in the course of the banquet by another uninvited guest Stepping over the slain bodies you call the musicians Let us have music (All this while Penelope sleeps) The feast must go on Lukewarm blood is poured into the wine jar Let the water and sponge cleanse the foul remembrance while Penelope sleeps And oh for some music oh for a flute to comb her hair oh for a harp to relax her cheeks after the ceremony of murder Closing her eyes to all this Penelope sleeps on reluctant to wake from a twenty year dream
“The Odyssey”
by Andrew Lang AS one that for a weary space has lain Lull'd by the song of Circe and her wine In gardens near the pale of Proserpine, Where that Aeaean isle forgets the main, And only the low lutes of love complain, And only shadows of wan lovers pine-As such an one were glad to know the brine Salt on his lips, and the large air again-So gladly from the songs of modern speech Men turn, and see the stars, and feel the free Shrill wind beyond the close of heavy flowers, And through the music of the languid hours They hear like Ocean on a western beach The surge and thunder of the Odyssey.
“The Sorrow Of Love”
by William Butler Yeats The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves, The brilliant moon and all the milky sky, And all that famous harmony of leaves, Had blotted out man's image and his cry. A girl arose that had red mournful lips And seemed the greatness of the world in tears, Doomed like Odysseus and the labouring ships And proud as Priam murdered with his peers; Arose, and on the instant clamorous eaves, A climbing moon upon an empty sky, And all that lamentation of the leaves, Could but compose man's image and his cry.
“Ulysses and the Siren”
by Samuel Daniel Siren: Come, worthy Greek! Ulysses, come, Possess these shores with me: The winds and seas are troublesome, And here we may be free. Here may we sit and view their toil That travail in the deep, And joy the day in mirth the while, And spend the night in sleep. Ulysses: Fair Nymph, if fame or honour were To be attain’d with ease, Then would I come and rest me there, And leave such toils as these. But here it dwells, and here must I With danger seek it forth: To spend the time luxuriously Becomes not men of worth. Siren: Ulysses, O be not deceived With that unreal name; This honour is a thing conceived, And rests on others’ fame: Begotten only to molest Our peace, and to beguile The best thing of our life—our rest, And give us up to toil. Ulysses: Delicious Nymph, suppose there were No honour nor report, Yet manliness would scorn to wear The time in idle sport: For toil doth give a better touch To make us feel our joy, And ease finds tediousness as much As labour yields annoy. Siren: Then pleasure likewise seems the shore Whereto tends all your toil, Which you forgo to make it more,
And perish oft the while. Who may disport them diversely Find never tedious day, And ease may have variety As well as action may. Ulysses: But natures of the noblest frame These toils and dangers please; And they take comfort in the same As much as you in ease; And with the thought of actions past Are recreated still: When Pleasure leaves a touch at last To show that it was ill. Siren: That doth Opinion only cause That ’s out of Custom bred, Which makes us many other laws Than ever Nature did. No widows wail for our delights, Our sports are without blood; The world we see by warlike wights Receives more hurt than good. Ulysses: But yet the state of things require These motions of unrest: And these great Spirits of high desire Seem born to turn them best: To purge the mischiefs that increase And all good order mar: For oft we see a wicked peace To be well changed for war. Siren: Well, well, Ulysses, then I see I shall not have thee here: And therefore I will come to thee, And take my fortune there. I must be won, that cannot win, Yet lost were I not won; For beauty hath created been T’ undo, or be undone.
“Ulysses”
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Matched with and aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known; cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments, Myself not least, but honoured of them all; And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use! As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life Were all too little, and of one to me Little remains: but every hour is saved From that eternal silence, something more, A bringer of new things; and vile it were For some three suns to store and hoard myself, And this grey spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. This is my son, mine own Telemachus, To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil This labour, by slow prudence to make mild A rugged people, and through soft degrees Subdue them to the useful and the good. Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere Of common duties, decent not to fail In offices of tenderness, and pay Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine. There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail: There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners, Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheads -you and I are old; Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
“The Lotos-Eaters”
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson “Courage!” he said, and pointed toward the land, “This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon.” In the afternoon they came unto a land In which it seemed always afternoon. All round the coast the languid air did swoon, Breathing like one that hath a weary dream. Full-faced above the valley stood the moon; And, like a downward smoke, the slender stream Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem. A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke, Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go; And some thro’ wavering lights and shadows broke, Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below. They saw the gleaming river seaward flow From the inner land; far off, three mountain-tops, Three silent pinnacles of aged snow, Stood sunset-flush’d; and, dew’d with showery drops, Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse. The charmed sunset linger’d low adown In the red West; thro’ mountain clefts the dale Was seen far inland, and the yellow down Border’d with palm, and many a winding vale And meadow, set with slender galingale; A land where all things always seem’d the same! And round about the keel with faces pale, Dark faces pale against that rosy flame, The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters came. Branches they bore of that enchanted stem, Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave To each, but whoso did receive of them And taste, to him the gushing of the wave Far far away did seem to mourn and rave On alien shores; and if his fellow spake, His voice was thin, as voices from the grave; And deep-asleep he seem’d, yet all awake, And music in his ears his beating heart did make. They sat them down upon the yellow sand, Between the sun and moon upon the shore; And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland,
Of child, and wife, and slave; but evermore Most weary seem’d the sea, weary the oar, Weary the wandering fields of barren foam. Then some one said, “We will return no more;” And all at once they sang, “Our island home Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam.” CHORIC SONG I There is sweet music here that softer falls Than petals from blown roses on the grass, Or night-dews on still waters between walls Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass; Music that gentlier on the spirit lies, Than tir’d eyelids upon tir’d eyes; Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies. Here are cool mosses deep, And thro’ the moss the ivies creep, And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep, And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep. II Why are we weigh’d upon with heaviness, And utterly consumed with sharp distress, While all things else have rest from weariness? All things have rest: why should we toil alone, We only toil, who are the first of things, And make perpetual moan, Still from one sorrow to another thrown; Nor ever fold our wings, And cease from wanderings, Nor steep our brows in slumber’s holy balm; Nor harken what the inner spirit sings, “There is no joy but calm!”— Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things? III Lo! in the middle of the wood, The folded leaf is woo’d from out the bud With winds upon the branch, and there Grows green and broad, and takes no care, Sun-steep’d at noon, and in the moon Nightly dew-fed; and turning yellow Falls, and floats adown the air. Lo! sweeten’d with the summer light,
The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow, Drops in a silent autumn night. All its allotted length of days The flower ripens in its place, Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil, Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil. IV Hateful is the dark-blue sky, Vaulted o’er the dark-blue sea. Death is the end of life; ah, why Should life all labor be? Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast, And in a little while our lips are dumb. Let us alone. What is it that will last? All things are taken from us, and become Portions and parcels of the dreadful past. Let us alone. What pleasure can we have To war with evil? Is there any peace In ever climbing up the climbing wave? All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave In silence—ripen, fall, and cease: Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease. V How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream, With half-shut eyes ever to seem Falling asleep in a half-dream! To dream and dream, like yonder amber light, Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height; To hear each other’s whisper’d speech; Eating the Lotos day by day, To watch the crisping ripples on the beach, And tender curving lines of creamy spray; To lend our hearts and spirits wholly To the influence of mild-minded melancholy; To muse and brood and live again in memory, With those old faces of our infancy Heap’d over with a mound of grass, Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass! VI Dear is the memory of our wedded lives, And dear the last embraces of our wives And their warm tears; but all hath suffer’d change; For surely now our household hearths are cold,
Our sons inherit us, our looks are strange, And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy. Or else the island princes over-bold Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings Before them of the ten years’ war in Troy, And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things. Is there confusion in the little isle? Let what is broken so remain. The Gods are hard to reconcile; ’Tis hard to settle order once again. There is confusion worse than death, Trouble on trouble, pain on pain, Long labor unto aged breath, Sore task to hearts worn out by many wars And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars. VII But, propped on beds of amaranth and moly, How sweet—while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly— With half-dropped eyelids still, Beneath a heaven dark and holy, To watch the long bright river drawing slowly His waters from the purple hill— To hear the dewy echoes calling From cave to cave thro’ the thick-twined vine— To watch the emerald-color’d water falling Thro’ many a woven acanthus-wreath divine! Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine, Only to hear were sweet, stretch’d out beneath the pine. VIII The Lotos blooms below the barren peak, The Lotos blows by every winding creek; All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone; Thro’ every hollow cave and alley lone Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotos-dust is blown. We have had enough of action, and of motion we, Roll’d to starboard, roll’d to larboard, when the surge was seething free, Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea. Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind, In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind. For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl’d Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl’d Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world; Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands, Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands. But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong, Like a tale of little meaning tho’ the words are strong; Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil, Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil, Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil; Till they perish and they suffer—some, ’tis whisper’d—down in hell Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell, Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel. Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore Than labor in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar; O, rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.
“Amoretti: Sonnet 23”
by Edmund Spenser Penelope for her Ulysses sake Deviz’d a Web her wooers to deceive: In which the work she all day did make The same at night she did again unreave. Such subtle craft my Damzell doth conceive, Th’ importune suit of my desire to shun: For all that I in many days do weave, In one short hour I find by her undone. So when I think to end that I begun I must begin and never bring to end: For with one look she spills that long I spun, And with one word my whole years work doth rend.