[Susan McLean]

Odysseus Afterwards

Home, I assess what's left: my wary wife,
still beautiful, but taut as a strung bow,
the softness of her cheek worn down by grief;

my son, whose ache I honed into a knife;
my father, tattered, leaning on his hoe,
a humbled man, shorn of his strength and wife,

who shares a hut with slaves; my land, whose chief
townsmen allowed their sons to overthrow
my household, woo my wife, and bring to grief

my son. For their contempt they paid their life,
their corpses stacked beneath my portico,
my slaves hanged who defied my son and wife.

But solitude still rings me like a reef.
My wife watches me guardedly, as though
I might yet prove a fraud. My father's grief

dogs him to my palace. Time's a thief
who torches what he steals. I can't regrow
the tree my bed was built on. O my wife,
my son! Nothing is evergreen but grief.


Revisions:
S2L1 "ache" was "aches"