ITHACA

ITHACA

ITHACA

So we were to go there together..........our heads dizzy with ouzo,
Lulled asleep by the Adriatic between Brindisi and Patras;
Together, we were to return to that clear blue motherland
Neither of us had known—
A homeland neither Penelope’s nor Odysseus’, nor even Cavafy’s,
But serenely our own—
Sparta would drench us in Mediterranean heat,
The Peloponnesus sparse yet content to be lived in—
For we were to go there not at once
But the long way round; surprised at each halt
Yet certain we were getting there—
To lose one another at Epidavros
And meet suddenly on stage—though unmasked and playing no part,
Our palms not sentient of what they longed to clutch,
But wound around each other like the wand of Aescalapius—
A single healing hand;
History would not tempt us upon the hill of Corinth,
As we scaled the bare crags of Aphrodite,
To share amidst her ruins a hermit’s solitary love—
And Athens would find us studiously unclassical,
The caryatids weary of wondering
If they were women or mere columns,
Cured of their longing to be more than pure stone;
No oracles would daunt us, no memories lure us
When we took ship from Piraeus,
Drawn by no sirens but our own low humming,
As the Cyclades wove themselves into a choral chant,
Oblivious of the straits that lay between them;
And no dreams would follow us into Mycenae,
Urging her lions to outleap their stone and roar;
No words echo the stillness of Agamemnon’s tomb
As we fell asleep—at once together and alive.
Yet such is the way of journeys—
The best ones are those never begun;
Ithaca, dream-home of the idle, dark hope of the damned, goodbye.....
I will live here alone by this muddy brown sea
Till I outlive the lure of your unseen shores;
For here, between these sand-ribs and high fronds of palm,
There is more to listen for than what cannot be heard,
Here gullcry and wingbeat syncopate at dusk;
And surf murmurs in my ears its wordlesss drone.