Jack D. Harvey’s poetry has appeared in Scrivener, The Comstock Review, Mediterranean Poetry, The Antioch Review, The Piedmont Poetry Journal and a number of other on-line and in print poetry magazines. The author has been a Pushcart nominee and over the years has been published in a few anthologies.
The author has been writing poetry since he was sixteen and lives in a small town near Albany, New York.
Past history, past tense, patient investigations,
digging in ruins, papyri,
broken pieces, marble heads, dismembered parts
supposedly shedding light on ancient days,
on the antique furniture, the furnishings
of the past, so easy to misconstrue;
the light, such as it is, dim and discreet,
a kind of Fata Morgana spread across time,
distorting distant events, objects, texts, monuments;
we see the past filtered through this insidious lens,
our fallible selves wandering lost
in a hall of mirrors stretching from then to now.
Such sights, such illusions
from the future’s Pisgah Heights
excite the imagination,
the mind’s eye sees,
but confuses delight of vision
with clarity and truth.
Take these two titled above;
Penelope the faithful
patiently waiting,
age and worry
fret her face.
Long ago, her lord
gone east, borne
by the favoring wind
of a human sacrifice
his fate sealed, found out
in spite of his futile attempt
at lunacy;
clever Palamedes paid back
in due time
stoned to death.
So Ulysses off to war
and Penelope
besieged by suitors
stalls for time
and time passes;
then comes
the destruction of Troy
burning and slaughter
and then the nostoi.
Ulysses starts home
over the unforgiving restless sea;
Poseidon his longtime enemy
shipwrecks him,
his makeshift raft destroyed
by Poseidon’s colossal wave
Ulysses floats, wet as a seal,
towards some new catastrophe.
Reft from an island rock
undismayed he swims along the rocky coast,
finds shelter along the shore
hides in the double shrub
of an olive tree and sleeps.
Waking and walking naked down the shore
towards his salvation,
careful to cover his shame
before a princess
playing ball with her maids.
Instructed by her
led to the palace
he finds favor with the queen;
granted hospitium
he spins his wondrous tales
to all assembled, of course
touches the heart of the princess.
He has been! He has seen!
she feels motherly compassion turning
to awe and womanly love,
even to her dark cottage
opening her to a new future.
Not to be, alas!
Penelope waiting,
Ulysses finally faithful
in deed and duty as well as word
does not give way.
Given a magic ship
he sleeps
while it skims the waves;
home before he knows it
bides his time,
stays disguised.
With Athena’s aid
Penelope sets a contest;
marked for death,
the swinish suitors
milling around palace and wife
do not live much longer.
Together again
Penelope and her lord
will go to bed in their wedding chamber
the olive tree bedpost
unmovable safeguard of their love;
will talk awhile and take their leave,
fading back
into the magnificent text
of the Odyssey.
In the familiar landscape
of their unadorned human story,
husband and wife
against the odds united again
come to a satisfactory close.
But how much of this story is lost to us?
How much of the Odyssey do we really understand?
From the hero clinging to a fig tree
to the impossible arrow shot through the axes
to the clothesline slaughter of the loose servant maids
what are we missing?
In the wide ways of the Odyssey
sacral and plain meaning conflated and obscured,
the fallacy of mere reference
leaves us guessing at what we can never know,
lost in the shadows of ancient unreliable light.
In Ulysses and Penelope back together
we see nothing but the simple truth
of a man and a woman
brought up from the millennia,
part of a story put together by bards
and sung to warrior aristocrats.
Still, our hearts open
and we take meaning and emotion
from what we already know,
reflecting back ourselves
on this dear couple
folded away in
the factitious peace and silence
of the ages.
For other contributions by Jack D. Harvey, please follow the links below:
Poetry in this post: © Jack D. Harvey
Published with the permission of Jack D. Harvey