THE ODYSSEY UNREAD

Posted by Admin on 19 April 2008, 12:00 am

Deckle-edged, twelve decades old, the pages lie,
prisoned by time-defying boards, alive,
potent with pencilled notes of long-dead men –
scholars apt to scan Anacreon or read
from Zenodotus: while I, incompetent, unschooled –
lexicography supplies my need – augments
half-remembered lessons in the Attic tongue.
Weary, ill: I shall not re-engage the great
Accidence and Syntax – victors long ago.
And Odysseus, aided by Leucothoe
or eagle-formed Athene, aye must sail
in his sea-swift craft observed through other eyes.

T. C. Hudson