After ten years at war, another ten at sea,
Odysseus, now with another king’s sailors
on another king’s swift slender ship,
wind taut sails, salt slick gleaming oars,
the great trickster of horse-building fame,
deceiver of armies, monsters, and men,
was on his way home from the battles of Troy
to his island kingdom of Ithaca
to settle scores and find peace again.
Magical Circe, bewitcher of men, directed Odysseus
to head first for Hades, sunless land of the dead,
to seek counsel from the renowned blind seer Tiresias.
To the war weary king, the wise old Tiresias said:
after tending to matters at home, set out for a place
where men, knowing nothing of white sails and sea,
would mistake your long oar for a winnowing fan.
There you will learn ways strange enough
for the last years of your life.
Home on Ithaca,
after praising Penelope for weaving by day
and unraveling by night his father Laertes’ burial shroud,
after training Telemachus on the massive bow,
after slaying the suitors and hanging the faithless maids,
after washing the blood from stone palace floors,
and burying their corpses in Ithacan graves,
after laying with Penelope in olive tree-bed rooted bliss,
Odysseus set off once again, this time on foot,
inland, away from the salt surging wine dark sea
a long oar slung over his shoulder,
to find a new life fit for his old age.
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This poem is based on a scene from Homer’s Odyssey,
Book 11. Circe the sorceress on the island of Aeaea
instructed the hero Odysseus to go to Hades, land of the
dead and consult the blind seer Tiresias about his return
home to his kingdom on the island of Ithaca. Laertes is
the aging father of Odysseus. Penelope is the loyal wife
of Odysseus. Telemachus is his son is now a young man
of twenty after two decades of his father’s sailor/warrior/
king’s absence.