And the Time Is: Poems, 1958-2013

Arms and the Word

147 Arms and the Word Great sailors though they were, the Greeks abhorred the sea. What was it but a gray monotony of waves, wetness in depth, an element by nature voyager-unfriendly and capricious? Sailing in sight of shore, they always beached at night to sleep before the next day’s rowing. Taming the sea by beating it with rods they named the ultimate insanity— a metaphor too obvious to paraphrase. In short, they knew a widowmaker when they saw one. Still, for honor, commerce, or a kidnapped queen, they waged their lives against what Homer called wine-dark and deep. Some came back never. Some learned too late that pacing a deck was far less hazardous than facing what awaited them at home . . . Homer would praise their iliads and odysseys in song. Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles would watch and wait, then write of wars much closer to the heart. They knew the lives of men— no matter how adventurous— 148 would end as comedies or tragedies. They wrote that both were fundamentally and finally domestic. Homer could sing his fill. The dramatists dared otherwise. Compared to troubles in a family, they saw this business with the sea and swords— regardless of the risk—as minor. ...