Ithaca gave you
it’s splendid journey
but has nothing left to give
– Cavafy

I.

If he up here with those gifts of bronze and gold
and precious embroidery the friendly Phaeacians gave him,
he must have been one tough son of a bitch, Odysseus.

It’s a sweaty, hour-long slog for the likes of us,
such as men are now. But those Greek heroes of old
could pack a load, because they were in fighting trim.

Still, I think I’ve been had. Things don’t look right.
Those cliffs are not sheer to the sea, and this cave’s too far,
and, furthermore, it’s waterless. The whole thing’s wonky.

Past the gabbling guinea-hens and the friendly donkey,
I’ve worked myself up in this lonian sunlight
to where Homer says the Naiads and Odysseus’ treasures were.

What I’ve got is a double-chambered cave with a metal stairway
that I can’t go down, because I didn’t bring a flashlight.
Such as men are now, I’d break my stupid neck.

And it’s empty down there, anyway. I should head back.
A shepherd’s yelling at his sheep half a mile away.
The Greeks yell at things all day; then they yell all night.

II.

Across that bay with the island in the middle,
Mount Neriton’s ridges shiver in the wines
Homer sure sounds like he saw them. And that down there

is Dexa Beach. In the Odyssey, that’s where
the Phaeacians left sleeping Odysseus. He woke in a fuddle.
He didn’t know Ithaca. Athena had made him blind

to familiar things not seen in nineteen years.
She told him the situation: How he was still
slated for trouble in his home town. So he hid

his treasure hoard up here, then he went and did
for those hundred-plus glutinous, lousy little suitors.
Was that how men were then—kind of easy to kill?

Ah, but Athena helped him, and he had a bright
young son, and only one side had weapons—their side.
So they killed the whole hundred, two heroes, and some household help.

! stand out, standing alone, here. A farm dog yelps
at me from the next hill over. A turisti sans flashlight,
just a camera and a backpack and a Lonely Planet Guide.

III.

None of it ever happened, but this is the place
where all of it never happened, where I am now.
The real situation’s irrelevant. It’s changed in the story.

The agonies of Odysseus, Penelope’s worries,
the teen-trials of Telemechus—there’s not enough space
on Ithaca for all that. But still, somehow,

I’m stupid enough to believe it. Maybe Homer once saw
this hole in the rock, that quiet bay down there;
and he needed proximity, so he made them more proximate.

He created a new situation. Only small poets sweat
the small stuff; the great ones break whatever law
of time or space they want to. Me, I split hairs.

I want things to look right. That’s how poets are now,
chain-ganged to the literal, clumsy and colloquial.
Homer spoke a bigger language, about bigger things.

So I’ve seen no Naiads here, no treasures, no springs.
But that’s no big deal. I’ll remember them anyhow,
on my way back down to Ithaca town and nightfall.