Telemachus

father, Oh to know the way to the seer Tiresias! 
so he could divine for me
the treacherous rocks your sea-craft was wrecked against
or the  sword against which your stout heart was broken.


i would settle even for the briefest sight of the dune of sand
beneath which your   
whitened bones were buried.


but our house and fortunes remain haunted by your absence
& bound by a curse
that only your presence or at least
a shrine crowned by the white gem of  your skull can lift.


but i worry most for mother,
how she pines for you,
her face at night like a fixed star staring from her bedroom window-- seaward.
defeated by grief,
i fear she'll turn into a pillar of salt.


yet winds possessed by the genius of Pallas Athene
that good goddess who favors you,
blow from across the wide, churning seas
with rumours of you still being alive.


alive somewhere in the nymph Calypso's cave:
her slender arms and breasts a warm harbour
from the toil--- the cold and  dread of seas whose bottoms
are littered with the bones of those it has unstrung.


but in those arms on her evergreen island--
halfparadise, halfjungle
you, so accustomed to the gregariouness of our cities
its councils and courts,
must fear the harrowing white silence which sets the heart to ash,
and the conscience to regret in that desolate place.


that same silence which hung over not just the cyclop's island
but also over the ruins of famous troy
with the smoke and stench of death
which you and the other petty Greek warlords
breached its walls
to achieve.


now the defeat you unleashed against Troy
has reached the shores of your own island kingdom,
even before you.


my mother who sadness has made even lovelier
and who constancy has turned into an untouchable star-
has become the Helen of Ithaca.
& you should know well what that means:


the face that launched a bitter fight over not just her hand in   marriage
but also the modest legacy you left me to inherit.
Against the petty warlords who threaten us
we  are reduced to tragic waiting, like Trojan women and children
on the walls of Troy
pinning all their faith
on the wide shield of gentle Hector, tamer of horses.