ITHAKA 2001-2008
by Jim
Barnes
Hope all your Ithakas are
good ones.
--Cavafy
Seems
ages on the hill above the rocky point
I have
kept my eyes on the horizon where sky
drops
to sea. No sign of any ship I do not
recognize,
just the ragtag wornout fishing fleet
about
to sink. No single sail grabbing the wind
and
fifty men at oars to tell us you are back.
This is
no Ithaka now you would own up to,
your
old wife mad, your queer son gone, your dog
years
dead. The old men gathered here like the food
and
wine, but do not give a hoot about the place.
You
might as well have gone down in the fishy sea:
this is
no Ithaka you would want to rule. Still we
hope
for your long return, the foolish old friends of
the
foolish king who went away to war for fear
of
losing what we have lost anyway, although
you,
somewhere landbound or adrift on the deep, still
may
dream of coming back to stony Ithaka,
to a
faithful wife and infant son. Wherever
you
are, I send you these heavy words on a wind
that
has treated us all badly: there is little
use for
you to come back home old and mortified.
Ithaka
is not the Ithaka it was. For god's
sake,
be strong. We have grown even older hoping.
Perhaps
you have found another Ithaka elsewhere
in the
wide world, a soft and welcome country that
nourishes
you in a way we never can again.
I wish
you well, but I must keep on hoping that
you
will come back again. You could teach us a way
at
least to cope with the thing that has befallen
us. The
tourist's shops and the garish touring boats
prosper,
but they are in the hands of foreigners.
The
breeding cattle prized by Philoitios, bankers
in
Pylos hold for the debts Penelope incurred.
The
suitors had no staying power when the booze
ran
out. No one manned the presses nor tended vines.
Pirates
from Samos got the last of goats and sheep
when we
tried to take the herds across to Argive
lands.
Hardly any of us are left who give a damn
about
the state. I am here every day, though hope
runs
thin. I know you will return sometime. It is
no
Ithaka to brag about. Hope you will bring
our
salvation in some form. Yellow gold would help
and
medicine that would somehow cure all the pain
of mind
and body. We are ill in Ithaka.
~ first
published in The North American Review
