“[Y]ou have to go away and take an oar
to people with no knowledge of the sea,
who do not salt their food. They never saw
a ship’s red prow, nor oars, the wings of boats”
– Odyssey, Book XI, trans. Emily Wilson
Though in this final trip of Nobody
a saffron polish saturates the dawn
illuminating fair Penelope,
it matters not, Eumaeus, if you’re gone.
Nor does it matter that there’s poetry
about bruised cloudscapes blanketing the year
and people who don’t know Poseidon’s sea,
if you, who cared for Argos, are not here.
The bard declaiming stories matters not,
no matter how prodigious or how keen,
no matter that Athena wove the plot.
Wine burns the throat, and Homer’s spell is broken,
without you, patient swineherd, who have been
the one to whom the poem was always spoken.