Troy Falls

The wooden stallion ramps beneath the walls
And is brought forward. Sweat, the knotted ropes, 
The thrust between the ramparts. Part the gates 
Before him. When he’s settled in the town
He spews his puissant burden down
And posterns open. All that waits
For this pure Troy discovered. He who mopes
For buggered, beggared. Brave Achilles falls,
In falling, fails to fault this. Ah, the men
Who swagger, picking up this bronze, this whore,
This linen, spitting on the dead.
Most didn’t see Ulysses as he retched
Beyond the middens, how he fetched
His dinner up, not for the dogs, they fed
On richer stuff. But some heard how he swore 
And followed him back to the sea again.

Helmsman

What bow I got I bent.
I plucked the strings that wrenched 
The sails to catch the breeze
And bent a bow for home.
Our wooden hull anock
Upon the sea-king’s finger,
Fletched with charts that showed 
Bluffs and the orphan rock.
We flew, the curling foam
Our notching. We were drenched 
With seablood and were slowed
By monsters, dreams, a friend 
Who would not leave us so 
Unfriendly, we must linger,
Fates. Now we near the seas
Of youth. Our master strings
And draws another bow.
But I am old, I’ve spent
My strength on other things.
I have no bow to bend.

Lotus

The langour soothes, intoxicates,
And longer than a dream, it changes 
Homesickness to home. We swoon
Upon the grassy bank, our night is noon. 
The nettle plant discharges beauty
(O, to be discharged), deranges
Hand and eye and dislocates our doom.
We weigh ourselves against the weights
Of time. We sleep within the world’s womb 
And waken to the sullen chains of duty.

On the Cyclops’ Island

We could have wished for sheep
And gotten none. We’d climbed the steep 
With empty goat-skins, wound up staring 
At old stinking one-eye. He not caring 
For our company, we found ourselves
The provender upon his pantry shelves. 
He swore he’d had enough of porridge. 
We had changed from foragers to forage.

Polyphemus

My friend is whose friend?
Whose voice filled the room?
What member trembled on my finger’s end? 
Who was forsaken and by whom?
I know by knowing no one
That my noon is not
Connected to another’s sun. My dawn
My own. I am not caught.
(You use ewe’s belly,
Belie my melted eye, a jelly.
The cave is empty. You who lied
Within, without, still double-eyed.)
It is unsaid. It is unsound.
I wind my thoughts that stutter still unwound, 
And raise a monstrous countenance to see
All things authentic and the author me.
My stones are thrown, my beery breath 
Rehearses in its sighs an eyeless death.

Ulysses to the Giant

I saw then that he wouldn’t listen,
Thought that we were taking of his sheep. 
Who needs them? We had need of water. 
It was a natural mistake. In his fold
We were, enfolded in his grasp
And carried to the cave, a rasp
Of throat his answer. What I told
Him then, the truth. But the slaughter
Of the innocents began. Us he did keep, 
Use one upon a time, upon a spit to glisten 
With our own juice. It was cruel
To put the stake into his eye
And cruel to tell him not my name
But no man’s. But he brought
It on himself. He was the fool
And we his blinders left him that wry 
Socket. I won’t take the blame
For that. What he deserved he got.

Bag of Wind

The leather sack bulked, enigmatic, squat
As the burly king who’d tendered it as gift.
It hunkered in the stern. The ones who’d fought 
Together at Troy’s walls could barely lift
It. Whether it was precious stone or ore
No one could guess. But we can guess that some 
Dark night when half the watch was sleeping, more 
Than likely in on it, sworn to keep mum,
Bronze daggers plucked the drawstrings and the bag 
Fell open. We all know what happened then
And who got wind of it. Only the flag-
Ship rode them out, those giant airs. The men 
Aboard were over and the monster breeze
Plucked flesh from bone to feed the hungry seas.

Circe

I had the villages below the bluff,
They prospered underneath my rod.
They tendered me enough
To soften all our hearts. The sailors
Never called us hostile. Willows
Grew beside our pools, the olive flourished, 
And we needed nothing. That sad Greek 
Who landed with his crews, he wanted peace, 
The others gloried in the change. A god
For those who wished their souls nourished, 
Suits of leather done to order by my tailors, 
For the dreamers, smoky pillows,
I had them all content within a week.
But this damned captain strokes
Himself. His fingers bore
Where they aren’t wanted. For
A month or two his pokes
Were bearable, but I am sore.
Poseidon, send him home again to Greece.

Erebus

Thin blue legs of these sheep 
Bent at their bony joints,
Then to fold together
Like poor broken sticks. 
Slump Of each woolly wether
As the red blood drains, anoints 
The sacred trenches. Deep
Is the cut that will pump
Ghost food in the earth bowl. 
Ah, we crowd. Our bare throats 
Burn for the juice of these.
But for a while a stump
Of spear denies us. He’s 
Waiting for the deep notes
Of the voice of Thebes. Soul 
Of a seer, fill this lump
With knowledge and with awe. 
Then let us all feed while
We introduce a man
To our own selves. We bump 
And push and if we can,
Defile him. He’ll defile
The oxen that we saw,
Sun brand bright on each rump.

Ulysses on the Deck

I sicken of the sea. I grind my teeth
Like rocks and wish they were. I lie awake
On cedar wood. I and the sheathing break
Our hearts for home. Sometimes I cannot breathe 
Without the scent of olive leaves, my heart
A captive of my nose, my sandaled feet
Sore from the decking seek the holy street
Of Ithaca. I’d known right from the start 
Penelope would wait upon the docks.
But she’s a woman and my teeth aren’t rocks.

Sirens

Raging at the mainmast, tied
To his own impotence, he swept by us
One storm-filled night. We sing.
We can’t do else, our voices wring
The wind for love. Pious
We sang that night. The drip
Of melted wax clot in a beard,
The knots that held his pride
Unknotted. Shrieking, his own mast
Upright and dripping. He had passed
His issue and his bloody wrists
Were parent to two swollen shaking fists.
We heard his cursing long after the ship
Had caught the offshore winds and disappeared.

A Soldier, Rowing

Thine innocence, most holy god of sea,
Take us in then and thrust us out again.
We writhe within thy waves and shudder when 
They crest. But we are men and can’t serve thee 
With issue, only with our rolling groans
When pleasure suits. I watch the color of
Thy passion but can no more read thy love 
Than fishes read the passions of the bones
They feed upon. I pull my oar and let
My muscles contradict thy will. The drum 
Becomes me and my fellows. Ah, we come 
Together, pull and ease, our salty sweat
Joins thine own in the bilges. Lord, the wars 
Are done, I’ll be thy lover and the oar’s.

The Oxen of the Sun

I pray. I feared thee, god of light,
Thee and thy kine. Their holy eyes 
Brown as the earth, their hides as white 
As truth, their look of mild surprise 
When we first landed on this bright 
Calm isle. Apollo in disguise 
Sometimes dwells here. A distant height 
Appealed to me, I searched the skies
For omen and an eagle’s flight 
Discovered where the godhead lies. 
When I returned, my men in fright 
Concealed the shambles. I surmise 
That’s why I wallow in this wave, 
Keelson for company. I save
The sight of shipwreck and I pray 
Myself into another day.

Charybdis

It’s said the sea lacks teeth. My mate and I 
Could argue that. We gnash our bits of bone 
With bits of granite. Granted, we’re alone, 
Though mated with each other. When the sky, 
Sicilian grey, looks in, we stand awry
And whistling in our windward crannies hone 
Our bite and breath. I had a special stone 
For this one, bright and two-faced as a lie. 
His vessel passed within our jaws. I sensed
A brotherhood. He kept his own jaws tight, 
The tension in his body was the shock
That kept our own jaws open and commenced 
This meditation. Scylla and I might
Have shown him what it was to be a rock.

Calypso

Agape my gates. I love the harper,
Love the strings he sounds. I tune my own string, 
Wind all careless flesh into my limbs, bring 
Bodies into trembling anthem. Sharper
Than my supine truth no man is. Warper
Of my woven wool no man shall. No thing
Says me naught, nor does my silver harp sing
Of another. That day before supper
Surgeons brought this sailor to my hearth ring. 
He was sick for homeland and my mothering 
Birthed him there to be his own usurper.
My skill is tone and sound, I do not claim
The poet’s laurels or the poet’s name.

Gifts

In our land, his soft words and his story
Won not only gifts but pity, pity is
The greatest gift. His speaking changed a savage 
Into hero. So we told him not to worry
And we shipped him off. No hideous
Monsters here, nor beauty, we would lavish 
Unspoiled love on this poor stranger. On the beach 
We laid him sleeping, all his treasures within reach.

The Return

To wake upon the beach, a sacrifice 
To sleep, the royal presence
Scattered in the sand. Athena’s lessons 
Humble him. To other eyes
He must appear a swineherd, but to this, 
This ancient one, companion.
Telemachus found them, lord and minion, 
And he knew his father’s kiss.
By the farrow shed a noble vengeance 
Plotted. Grizzled boar and shoat
Beside this tusker pledged to let the engines 
Of the gods be resolute
And send, to speed these solvings, to entice 
The traitors, royal blood but in disguise.

The Banquet Hall

The son and the old swineherd kept those swine 
Stymied in this room where their debauch
Had stripped the hangings off the walls
And marred the tables. Boar spear
Chorus to the singing of the bow.
Royal purple slimed the wooden floors
As shaft by shaft the suitors thought
Again, withdrew their suits, but not
The angry arrows. All the doors
Were locked. With nowhere else to go
Beaux advanced on arrow, only near
Enough to find a spearpoint. Shawls 
Disordered, how she shuddered then to watch 
Ulysses prove he’d learned revenge divine. 
Penelope had recognized the eye
And knew her husband, knew who had to die. 
Penelope had woven on her loom
Everything unravelling in that room.