The Insistent Island

Penelope

When she heard the rumors he’d finally

be coming home – months away, a long way off

– did she sense how broken hearted

he’d want to be: Circe, clinging

to his dreams like tangled hope.

Calypso lingering on his tongue.

One-eyed Cyclops blindly bellowing

on the distant wind. A man like that

wouldn’t look forward to much

but his fire. The old dog snoring

at his feet. His winecup full of an

insistent sea of voices, ocean moonlight,

dark water. Tied to his

chair like a mast by memories,

floating through a mist of illiterate

goddesses, scheming witches and useless war.

Is that when she opened the gates, put

flowers in her hair and invited

the young noble toughs to stay?

Flirting with one, then another, feeling

this one’s tattooed muscles, dropping a dirty

remark to the blond with the razor spear.

Perched, resplendent as Helen, at the head of the drunken

table, is that when she dispatched her urgent

welcome: Your home is waiting to be conquered.

Telemachus

For the boy it was a bit

more desperate. Was he fourteen,

fifteen when he realized the score –

the inevitable in store for him?

The stepson prince of an occupied country.

Once the claimant claimed his bride,

Telemachus would certainly disappear.

A knife in the back. a sudden

garrote in an alley. His skinny-kid’s

corpse sailing away in a sack full of stones.

The ungrateful runaway who broke his mother’s heart.

Except she certainly knew. Wisdom

ran deep in that family.

So when Athena flittered down

and became an old man, it was no surprise.

They listened. Get out while you can, she

whispered. Don’t ever come back here

without your father.

I was nobody.

When that proud god’s barbarous

son, who cracked men’s skulls like

eggshells to drink their brains, asked

me – I didn’t want to have a name.

I wanted to crawl, slither, squirm

through some crevice into nameless

nothingness. I wanted to be as

small as could be and still be.

Too tiny to see, too quiet for

salivating tongues to notice.

Not that hushed moment the

shivering white ox, sprinkled

with barley rests in just before

it’s hammer-stunned and the bronze

blade slits its veins.

Not the ear-pricked stillness that

pauses the thirsty stag, wondering

what else might be lurking near

the trickling stream.

I was more shameful prey: a piglet

too paralyzed to squeal, a hoarse

rooster complicitly shedding

its panicked feathers.

No One – oh gods – if I was No One,

no one would hurt me. Everything

else was just a trap.

On the filthy floor

of Cyclop’s blood slick cave,

I only wanted to be whatever

it was I was before being squeezed

into this carnivorous world.

So, doing what had to be done, and

blinding that drunken one-eyed

prick. was like being reborn, naked

alone and screaming

Odysseus, Odysseus, and don’t

you or your damned father-god

forget the name that will

outlive you both.

Circe

He slept with her because, as Hermes warned, it

was too dangerous not to. And then, again and

again for a year, because she was a slow, warm

dark tide in a golden August sea. They

went from “Your face looks like a god’s

when you come” to “It’s your flawed humanity

I love”, to “You’re flawed”. Every bit as much

as summer, winter has its reasons. He left

when it was too dangerous not to.

The Sirens

What surprised him – so helpless and expectant –

was that the sound was something else than sound.

A sense of sunlight in the ear, a fragrance

that could only be heard and then a wing

and the utter joy of flight. As much beyond music

as harmony transcends speech. A heartleap

into a resonance so god-like he suddenly

knew what it was the gods worshipped.

And all this from the tonsils of three

wretched crones who sang as mindlessly as

spiders weave. Hunger is treacherous.

Being a Poet

Homer imagined how the dead might be invoked:

by digging a pit and tempting them

into daylight with the sweet taste of blood.

He imagined the lost might prophesy, might

know – not only what was and what is,

but – things still yet to be.

And did the tale-spinner hope (as everyone

does) he might somehow avoid his own

dark trip into those ant caves where

millions upon millions patiently work

preparing a place for each of us, watching

our brightness from the shadows?

Countless, breathless eyes

caught up in our every word.

And then there was Tiresias.

Who, in a complicated story full of copulating snakes,

became a woman for seven years, then changed back to being a man.

To quote Teresias, who had every reason to know:

“…insofar as sexual pleasure,

the woman’s measure

is nine times that of the man’s “

Of course, Hera plucked out his eyes

for saying what he said.

Any woman who thinks a man

gives her more than he takes,

has to be blind.

And any man who

believes those helpless moans

is being led by his one-eyed worm.

Kalypso

Hermes, quietly, slipped

out of the forest one day with a wink

and a message from Circe.

“Your cousin wanted you to know,”

he smiled. “There’s more than a chance

he’ll come this way. Don’t pass him up.”

“What is it Circe sees in mortals, Hermes?”

The messenger god coughed, then mimicked

Circe’s lazy, curious voice: “Like the rest of them,

he has that fascinating fragrance of death.

But he’s smarter than most. He sees

it clearly, and he doesn’t whine.”

“You know, Hermes, (Circe said this)

we gods can’t stomach a bite of flesh,

still we drool for the smoke

of the cookfire. Human ass

is always on fire and it’s

the sweetest burnt offering.”

When I asked Hermes what he thought,

he shrugged. “Everyone to their own taste.

I do my share to help humans,

I don’t think I need to fuck them.

Lonely goddesses, on little islands,”

he smiled, “are a different story.”

But even with his clever prick and hands

dear, sweet Mercury seemed

somehow lacking and distracted.

…It was just a week or so later

that Ulysses staggered out of the pounding

surf: parched, speechless, and blind with

salt, trembling, like a soon to be sacrificed

lamb. I must have been only

a gentle blur to him as I guided him

to my little house in the pines.

I let him suck on a sponge soaked

in clear spring water, then washed him

and watched over him while he slept.

Slowly, with ambrosia and honey and

small cups of wine mixed with rosewater,

I nursed him back to himself.

There wasn’t any hurry. I wasn’t

Circe – I know how to take my time.

Weeks later, when he was really

ready, when he could hardly wait, I took

his dark curly head between my morning-pink

thighs – and then he knew. He would never

have done – that – with any human woman. And

not with Circe, either, I was sure.

Circe had him for a year.

I lost track of time, but it must

have been at least five

years before he stopped following me

from room to room and began to wander

off on his own. Even then,

at first it was only to gather flowers

for me, or to collect his thoughts so

he could remember a song.

I have so much time, it’s hard

to pay attention, so I don’t know

just when it was I stumbled upon him

behind the sea rocks, roasting three

plucked doves on a thin stick over

his little fire. I was too shocked

to let him see me, and kept myself hidden

in the trees. But that night, still keeping

my secret in our vine-canopied bed

I shocked myself again by screaming

in absolute delight as his smoky hands

caressed my fine white spine.

He came with such a helpless

pleading shiver that I realized he knew

I’d seen him eating the innocent flesh

and was simply waiting for my judgment.

I waited. I didn’t have his urgent

human nerves. I waited to see if

he would kill again and when I smelled

the smoke and blood on his fingers, I still waited

just to see if he’d raise the subject.

After enough time passed to convince me

he’d be happy to live a lie forever,

I asked him to sleep apart from me for a night.

And in the morning, with a smile, I asked,

“Ulysses. Isn’t the ambrosia which keeps

you young and lets you live with me almost as

if you too were a god – isn’t that enough for you?

Or is something else wrong between us?”

He was clever enough not to lie.

“I’m an animal,” he said. “It can’t be

changed. I’m sorry for the birds and rabbits.

Beyond that, I make no judgment.”

He could never hurt me, but for the first time

I was a little frightened to be alone with him.

He’d slept at our door all night and had washed

in the spring. But, while there was no trace of smoke

or burnt flesh, he had a quiet, brooding fragrance

of old dried roses mixed with fresh earth, mushrooms

and acorns. I noticed how scarred and wood-like

the palms of his hands were and I realized

that whatever cautions he’d felt about Circe,

he had absolutely no fear of me. I let him

take me there on the grass. Rode under him

like an acrobat under a bull in the ring,

then, knelt shuddering on all fours

to pleasure him like a cow. I was never

more supple, delicate or submissive.

And after I’d drained all his power

he held me – I thought – like a precious

serving girl he’d slapped in a stupid rage.

Though I never asked him to stop,

I don’t think he hunted much again.

But in the place of that conniving hunger,

he slowly developed an annoying habit of

sadness. He was, if anything, more solicitous

than he’d been since our first months. But still,

I could sense so much of him was elsewhere,

not listening. And I began to notice, after all

these years, that despite his diet of ambrosia

and my sacred caresses, he was developing

certain wrinkles, a fleshiness at the neck,

a, decidedly, middle aged stoop.

The morning he finally, sheepishly

asked if he might be allowed to go

home to die with his old wife – I thought –

“I’ve had the best of him. The rest

is nothing but loss. Better all at once

than watching this little by little.”

So we built a nice little boat and I tied

my scarf around his neck. I felt quite

magnanimous, quite divine. It wasn’t until

I saw how he skipped like a boy into the waves

and looked back laughing that I wondered:

Had I really been such a burden?

Nausicaa

She said she wanted Odysseus for a husband.

Her father was willing to arrange a marriage.

But really, it was something more primal, more

hazardous to that peaceable realm. All

that year, puzzled, amnesiac moods

kept invading her. “Where was I before

I was here? How did I get here?”

This puny island at the edge of boring nowhere.

An ambitionless people, so unfond of conflict

and weapons, that they purposely

settled in a spot no one really cared about.

Petty traders, bribers of their enemies: the women

wove, the men – danced! Not a hero or poet among

them. “Was this why I was born?”

Every night, their little banquet. Her jowled, kinglet

daddy, his simple minded cow of a queen. Chewing

their stupid food, munching like stolid mules.

When the thirteen year old darling chasing her

errant ball almost crashed into the brine covered

castaway, all sinew and hunger, standing there

like some glittering Achilles in the morning sun,

and he asked – “Are you human or divine, young lady?” –

he was the sudden answer to her own brooding question:

“Who am I, who are these people? What did they do

with my real mother, my real father?

Argus

Some say Homer embellished an older story –

perhaps the tale that Nausicaa, grown up to be a poet,

spun – a woman’s tale that praised a constant wife,

a belabored husband – a man of many chaste sorrows.

It was Homer who wove in the nightmares

and dreams, the lotus eaters, the monsters,

and perfumed islands under a naked new moon.

And Homer who imagined faithful Argus:

At journey’s end, still disguised

as an old beggar, but finally face to face

with Penelope, our hero’s eyes danced with joy

at her benevolent, glowing eyes. He was pleased

with her graciousness to the duplicitous

traveler who assured her Odysseus would

soon be home to claim his own. She’d aged

well, he noticed, barely a wrinkle. still somewhat

slim, just a tiny bit gray. But he had to admit

there were certain moments that were

none of her business, he wouldn’t have

traded for twenty years of wedded bliss.

Odysseus was at peace as he left Penelope.

…It was the old dog Argus

dragging his arthritic hips, his hound’s

heart leaping to heaven as he collapsed

in the ecstatic scent of his lost master….

Watching that pitiful cur die, the whole long

watery exile screamed and became stone.

His wandering rage turned to iron. Something

essential snapped into place. With thighs

like trees, shoulders sinewed with oak root,

he strode into the banquet hall, his clever

hands flexing for the leather and bow.

When I reach the point where Telemachus

hangs the women, I feel ashamed

for his bloodthirsty father who ordered

the slaughter and for Telemachus,

who chose to sadistically strangle them all

on one dancing rope.

But most of all, I’m ashamed for

Homer, who knowing so much,

surely knew better. They were sluts

who slept with the enemy, he tells us.

They got no more than their stupidity deserved.

Couldn’t he have – just as easily – used

the opportunity to remind us

that cruelty to the helpless is our most monstrous trait?

And, then, when they disembowel and cut

off the nose and ears and hands and feet of the treacherous

steward, I know things have gotten out of hand. What

human purpose does any of this, almost Jehova-like,

retribution serve? And I begin to suspect

the cat and mouse savagery of divine intervention.

Who else but the subtle and unforgiving goddess of wisdom,

who – chastely, but no less than her rural sisters –

loved Ulysses above all mortal men for

the clarity of his deceptive eyes

and the sudden logic of his violence?

Pork

And thou, Oh swineherd Eumaeus –

the only one in all the volumes

the singer spoke directly to:

Was all this for you?

The unappeasable gods,

the foaming journey, all those good

men lost to slippery fame and bad behavior.

The wandering son and the wandering

father, needing just you, oh swineherd

Eumaus, to see into each other like mirrors.

Of course you begin to glow, but wonder

why such poetic honor should come

to someone so humble? Could it be,

you ponder, that the time may be

finally arriving when the last shall be

first on this earth? The delicious way

the subtle voice suddenly wafts

you into the wild story like oven smoke:

And it’s you, you, oh swineherd Eumaeus,

you, who in the end saves their bacon

at the slaughter of the gluttonous.

And your chest swells while you smile

never suspecting you’re just a blur

in nearsighted old Homer’s

book-ruined eyes. That it’s the platter

in your greasy fingers he’s trying

to tempt within reach.

Archaischer Torso Apollos

Wir kannten nicht sein unerhörtes Haupt,

darin die Augenäpfelreiften. Aber

sein Torso glüht noch wie ein Kandelaber,

in dem sein Schauen, nur zurückgeschraubt,

sich hält und glänzt. Sonst könnte nicht der Bug

der Brust dich blenden, und im leisen Drehen

der Lenden könnte nicht ein Lächeln gehen

zu jener Mitte, die die Zeugung trug.

Sonst stünde dieser Stein enstellt und kurz

unter der Schultern durchsichtigem Sturz

und flimmerte nicht so wie Raubtierfelle;

und bräche nicht aus allen seinen Rändern

aus wie ein Stern: denn da ist keine Stelle,

die dich nicht sieht. Du mußt dein Leben ändern.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Archaischer Torso Apollos

We didn’t understand that outrageous head, the eyes

whose irises actually flowered. But his torso

still stares like a chandelier turned low,

dimmed to illuminate just its own steady

flame. Why else would the crease

of the chest muscles blind you? And the slight

tensing of the loin – it’s nothing if not a smile

traveling to his center on a journey to procreation.

If not, this would only be a fragment

of mutilated stone under the shoulders’ transparent

slump. Wouldn’t glisten, anymore than a predator’s

fur, or leap like radiating star fire.

Because there isn’t any single part of it that isn’t

watching you. You have to live another life.

(trans. Art Beck)

what really whispered to me were not

the remnants of their useless gods,

but those sad, minus fourth century, Greek

grave stelae: The deceased ritually seated

as if hearing his or her prognosis for the first stunned

time. The small group of friends, family, usually one

in particular – the most stricken? – holding the hand

of the departed in quiet solidarity. In one tableau, an

unmistakable twin brother. Has any of this

ever made sense to us?

…Abandoned lines from decades ago in an almost

discarded vacation notebook. So many since lost,

unforeseen, gone. So many new reasons to again be so

haunted by the breath in those dead stones.

1999 – 2018

The Insistent Island is a hybrid work, neither essay nor translation, but a poetic response to the myriad incarnations of the Odyssey; particularly Samuel Butler’s prose translation as lodged in Beck’s memory via a 1980s audiobook rendition. The poems were written over some thirty years, finding their synergy unplanned and unexpected. Like Homer’s originals, best taken with food and drink and, of course, a pinch of salt. 

The Insistent Island was originally published as a limited edition chapbook by Magra Books in 2019. Magra Books is a yearly series of four chapbooks, printed in editions of 250 copies, featuring unique works by important writers. Paul Vangelisti, editor; Michele Lombardelli, managing editor; S.E. Pessin, editor-at-large.