Odysseus, rogue of twists and turns, incessant braggart,
Minor prince of a minor island in the wine dark sea,
You started all this, these long years of siege and skirmish,
All to impress a woman who could never be yours.
Yes, we were all drunk but you just had to jump on the
Banquet table and shout an oath to Olympus and King Menelaus
That we'd go to Hades for Helen's honor,
You miserable, friggin' grandstander.
But when the black ships came for us,
You hitched a plow to a bull and an ass,
Ran furrows in the surf, casting salt behind.
Even I believed you were mad.
Then Palamedes, your friend, asked your name;
"I'm Nobody! Helen who? Troy?? I grow brine!"
Old fox smiled, saying, "Then you don't know this child,"
And put the baby before the ploughshare's path.
You failed the test by not butchering your infant son,
Shrugged to your new wife, said we'd be back in a fortnight;
Ten years now we've rotted in these ditches
Before this city of impregnability.
I should have put an arrow into you long ago
But now -- maybe by fever or despair -- you are genuinely gone,
Hammering, sawing day and night your great wooden horse.
The men shake their heads, the gods are bemused.
Shivering in my cloak last night I dreamed of home,
But Athena, goddess who favors you, was there,
Chiding me, showing me in the blaze of my own hearth
Your cursed name sung in heroic verse for eons.
As for me and the thousands of soldiery
Far from home and a wife's or mother's tears,
Our lives, our names, our stories simply disappear
In a sweep and ebb of the ocean of years.
ã 2005 Bruce Jewett
