Thoughts of Ithaka

Home is always ahead until we decide it is here.

This poem was inspired by an in-depth scrutiny of Homer’s Odyssey. It was conceived and written as I wrote my long essay based on the epic poem. The Odyssey has always been part of my life since as early as I was 7 when I watched the movie adaptation. While writing about it years later, I got to ‘meet’ the hero and gained a somewhat glimmer of understanding into his character. Many of us can be found in parts of him.

For that man; husband, father, king, and wearied sailor, Hero and model for the Argive warrior, With wits for centuries and wiles for tongue, Favoured by the grey-eyed warrior goddess, Home was the missed sheets of twenty years in the arms of his aged wife;

For home he shunned the bed of a goddess and rejected beauty coveted by gods.

For love, he turned his back on deathless life coveted by mortal men, For love, he chose numbered days, rickety bones and grey hair, for home and the bread grown on home soil, he tossed the cup of ambrosia.

What is a crown of wealth to a king pining for his old modest queen? Why mortality? because living is only worth living for the living who await death’s visit.

Propelled by thoughts of Ithaka, that man pushed his weary oars; For home, he braved the spite of a vengeful god in waters of conspiracy;

And she, steadfast even as jackals raid his barns and woo her forced to carry the title, widow For somehow, amidst ravenous wolves pining for his treasures and conjugal bed, the threads of her loom pulled on his heartstrings homewards. But hope in reckless faith carries him onwards, That her sheets still, is the one they laid together and his son wearing glory like armour would not shun his unfamiliar father’s strange embrace, late by two decades.

One little detail I like about this poem? I managed to sneak in my name in. You’d have to literally read in-between the lines to find it.

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