Homer’s South

Last Ports-Of-Call Puerto de Andratx

Roses and columbines, pinks and rabbitsare the suits he shuffles listening to the owlsin Puerto de Andratx, little more than guessesin this light, playing without partnersexcept the night birds that leave remnantsof field mice in the crooks of olives.

Unseen, the ocean draws its longbowalong the shore. Rabbits make more rabbitsamong roses, their young ones risking talons.

He pats two columbines against his eyelidsto trick him into sleep, imagines sea pinksa second foam along Mallorcan clifftops.Choosing a night without a moon,June sallies north from pirate ports.

Flying at 9500 Feet Above Cyrenica, Air Speed 220 mph, August 1, 1947

In that blue purple light the lamps come onin ancient towns between the desert and the Seaof Barbary: Euhesperidae, Tauchira, Barca,Cyrene of the golden thrones, Apollonia.One pattern of the waves, another of the sand.From here the dunes are curved like cockle shells,earnest, not of earthly pilgrimage, but rest.Which was the blessing? Why the bitterness?The spoils, the husks.

Three Graces here embrace in Aphrodite’s Garden,Apollo’s shrine and spring, the Hill of Myrtleswalled to cliff-falls of tombs. Filled to overspilling,the catacombs, with dead of Cyrenica,those smiling and most happy deadwho worshipped pleasure, set a journeyto learn from all the senses, not philosophy.Which was the blessing? Why the bitterness?The spoils, the husks.

These were the first and last true hedonists.O, imbeciles, to take such earthly chancesbetween the brittle thistles and the sea,between the desert and first olive tree …or else wise women, men, whose hair like Berenice’ssmells of extinct silphium, whose hennaed handsrake in, for want of afterlife,the husks, the spoils.

Reading Seneca’s Troades On The Train In Northern Virginia

The landscape I look out upon, keeping my fingersin the book, already has its Homers: Lowell, Allen Tate …We shudder then release as if shuntingand pass a pyramid of stones put upby the railroad construction crewto mark Fredericksburg’s battle site,south of the town where morning mistsdelayed battle, rose in question marks.

After, we clip-clop freely onand in plain view discover the frame house,so isolated, where Hector died of wounds—or Stonewall Jackson—but that was spring.The leaves I see are autumn’s. Burnside’s blunderwas a December battle. Barksdale’s sharp- shooters picked off men half-submergedtrying to throw pontoons across the Rappahannock.

When troops succeeded crossing, wave on wavethey flung themselves against a wall of fireon Marye’s Heights. Meanwhile, one hour of siegetoppled lares and penates, changed the town to charnel.In her front parlor, acting out the pietá,a woman rocked, center of six dead men.Her skirts spongy with blood, she staredbeyond her doorless doorway at a transformed street.

Nearer at hand stands Hector’s tomband the boy hiding. Tell me againwhat happened when Troy fell, forit is always falling and unscrupulous Ulysseswill trick the mother in Andromacheto give away her son, betrayal on betrayal.Such men, such women, all for war.The dead need feeding. Corpses count on this.

“Earned dead Achilles no such prizeamong captive women?” His bride, Polyxena,is Iphigenia’s double. These Greek shipscannot set sail without a young girl’s blood.Troy’s heir, Hector’s heir, Astyanax is wantedto seal off fate, or try, to lustrate stones.Smashed then. So Troy becomes a smudgeupon a white horizon? No more? No, and not yet.

Black ashes of Ilium carried offon sky-high question marks.And death? Ask where you’ll lie, Andromache.The twitching canvas urges the Greek fleet.“Hurry to the shoreline, captives!”or “On To Richmond!”Fate ric-ric-ricochetsand we are lifetimes late.

The First Cool Day

They sing of spring, the chilblained ones,sun-searchers in a melt of Northern woods.I’ve known the North and planted with the bestcrocus and...