Looking at Ithaka

The Patras ferry shifted course;

we entered the strait between Levcas

and the north ends of Kephallonia and Ithaka,

and traveled down the latter’s eastern coast.

We had a good look, then, at Ithaka,

Odysseus’ isle, expecting to be charmed.

Odysseus, who was “never at a loss”

on battlefield or bed, did what he had to do

but yearned, at intervals, for home,

his kingdom, son and faithful wife,

and got there ten years late to find a mess.

Athena with him, though, he bent the bow

and slew the suitors, to his endless fame.

His is a story that has everything--has sex

and glamour, violence, a happy ending

(wily Odysseus as the most unlikely

champion of family values).

The actual island of today

is rocky, mountainous,

showing no evidence of opulence,

of plains for farming,

grazing grounds for herds.

Hard to imagine there a palace

with the stores to feed the suitors

all those many years--that looting lot.

“The thing seen is the thing as seen,”

said Wallace Stevens.

Just imagine Baudelaire, passing by Ithaka

on his “voyage to Cythera”; his ennui-ridden vision

would have seen the suitors triumph,                                                    

riot and lechery the rule,

Penelope for any man

(after he’d finished with Telemachus).

Looking at Ithaka, then, what do we see,

we wanderers so far from home ourselves?

“See-one-Greek-island-and-you’ve-seen-them-all”?

There is a sameness, true,

of rugged mountains, vegetation sparse,

but shrug-offs will not do for Ithaka.

We want it to be Homer’s; want

there to be riches and a palace; want

to see these things whether they’re there or not.

Do we feel cheated at the actuality?

We’re suitors, aren’t we, trying to

make claim on what cannot be ours--

Homeric Greece, the Ithaka of dreams.

The suitors of Penelope pressed long and hard,

and died, as Homer said,

like fish stacked on a beach.

Grateful, we’ll see what we can see in Greece,

feast on the scraps, and head for home on time.

Copyright @ James McGowan, 2006