I. ULYSSES DYING
Rawboned lank warrior of the single eye,
Death’s-head unwinking, was it in a dream
I quenched your sight? Then it was on a lie
I staked the lives of comrades seeking home.
You wait still, rusty as the broken arms
Silted with dust of Troy and Hector’s flesh.
Who are you now? wife, servant, son? The worms
That eat me whisper but the one name, Death.
I rule this island sea-surrounded, free,
Building, unbuilding, water, rock and sand.
Now at the slack I gather towards a sca
Level as Troy; like homecoming, the end.
Ready? aye, always. Always at my side
At kill or council, single eye that gathered
The heat of heaven to fire what I said
And did. Now let me die to what I fathered.
Lift me once more, turn me to see my coast,
The single beacon shining vessels clear,
Troy cleft like a heart, myself a ghost
Already, haunting all I hold, held dear.
II. ULYSSES AT SIXTY
Even to rot enchanted, root with swine,
So it were far from home, at least were choice-
I who feel day by day an old man’s sin
Tightening the heart, a hunter trapped in ice.
Day after day that cold glass locks my face
That dims with my breathing. Must I root and fall
In starveling rock, never again to raise
Nausicaä white and fluted in the hall?
Ah, but the mind is free. Unbounded spheres
Of thought, they say, roll beyond flesh and bone …
As though the brute heart, hobbled by the years,
Could cut the mind loose, free to hunt alone!
Here is the old man’s wisdom: ‘Flesh is grass,
Pleasure an ice-edge melting in the sun.’
What should I have to do with words so wise?
They put the sun out, call the outdoors in.
I shall not pray for youth. No, turn me mad!
Can spirit and sense that lived by fire thrive
On water and rock unless the brain glow red
And rise in madness melting like a wave?
III. ULYSSES AT FIFTY
The horse grew pregnant by my wit:
I sheathed my sword to curry it,
And watched grown children making war:
Nothing is worth fighting for.
The hale go home changed as the dead
With mud and fire in the head,
And hands that had spread the secret groin
Of nightmare, itch to burn or drown.
And play the lickspit adult game
Murderously, knowing home
A plot for charming child and wife
As though none living lost a life.
I see from the sand the vessels ride
Crowded with ghosts. This ebbing tide
Is flood on one forbidding shore:
Which of them is worth fighting for?
IV. ULYSSES AT PORTY
Pledges I swore to keep
That I gave young and unwise,
Have wakened out of sleep
Fast behind innocent eyes:
Now I see their shape,
Monsters bred of hope
And their food, lies.
What cause or random curse
Seeded them first in the brain?
Is youth better or worse
Over and over again?
Wisdom is patience then,
Age but a winding down,
The dead end remorse?
Anger can in its lunge
Overset heart and mind
Clung to the utmost edge
And naked under the wind:
Turf slides out from the hand-
Though if luck hold, sand
May check the plunge.
Yet I have prepared for stone
To break my dying fall:
The heart hidden alone
Shall stream out on the swell,
Lights liver brain
Pledge the sea with a stain,
Offal to feed a gull.
V. ULYSSES AT THIRTY
How wide the sea, Penelope, and deep!
I hear it wheel and grinding at my back.
Our camp, between those white walls and the beach,
Must drink an ocean, or the walls must break.
I see you, with the boy, in the olive grove,
The morning sun a burden on your breast;
You will forgive my dreams: either I love
Your grace, or conjure Helen out of dust.
Once when the press bore hard and from the kill
Two of us flailed the chariots towards the shore,
I passed the wall’s edge: even fear stood still
To watch her watching, gold on the dusted air.
And I felt weakness leaking through the reins
Till the horses slackened pace, and had the foe
Not stopped below the bending of her glance
I had fallen there-betraying all I know.
Late evening now and the tents, like sated beasts
At still graze on a field that leads inshore,
Keep passions in Ajax shining boasts,
Achilles his vain armor. This is war.
VI. ULYSSES AT TWENTY
Dear heart, the oracle that blest
My married burden on your breast
Calls clear: we must sway up at dawn
And sail, now every choice is gone.
Who knows how fortune and the gods
Gamble our lives, or what the odds?
The throw that gave me you I take
In earnest for as fair a stake.
The servants can do all: be kind
And slow; keep nothing on your mind,
Only the boy who grows to gather
Our two bloods-what we are together.
I serve my masters with one heart:
The better one I hide apart.
To men who dare not see the whole
I would not trust a single soul.
Therefore, dear heart, I am as wise
As wisdom’s manly in their eyes.
Until the end I store with you
The mind that grows and makes us new.
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