ManicDDaily

To Homer

You sang of Achilles
with wingéd words,
which makes me suspect
you knew the sounds of anger
as well as birds.

You sang of the wine dark sea
before many-benched ships,
which makes me feel your lips,
dried out upon long lines,
pining for the tang
of retsina.

You sang of a hero
who, calling himself “nobody”,
seared the Cyclops’ eye,
the giant then crying that he’d been blinded
by nobody–
which makes me sigh
at your sense of humor–

but also makes me sure–
that “man of resource” forced
to wander ten long years
that even the grey-eyed goddess could not
steer him through,
not with her night-sharp owl–
that, yes, you knew a thing
or two
about anger.

*****************

Here’s a draft and possibly cheating poem for Brian Miller’s challenge to write like a “blind poet” on dVerse Poets Pub.  

Process Notes–Homer, the allegedly blind alleged poet of the great Greek epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, wrote of Achilles, the angry hero, of the Iliad.  In the Odyssey, Odysseus, that “man of resource”, blinds Polyphemus, the Cyclops son of Poseidon, the God of the Sea, with a sharpened heated log, then is essentially punished by Poseidon and made to wander years before reaching home, while Athena, the grey-eyed goddess devoted to Odysseus, watches, unable to save him from this fate. 

Retsina is Greek wine, which is, I believe, aged in pine barrels and has a taste of pine resin. Some scholars now say that ancient greek did not have a separate word for blue and that the wine-dark sea should be translated wine-blue sea, and even that there may have been something alkaline in the water that made ancient greek wine blue.  Everyone seems to still like that phrase though–wine-dark sea–which is used many many times in Homeric texts.  I was reminded of it in a recent poem by Joy Ann Jones, Hedgewitch.