Rex Warner
Odyssey
Here is a bright ship and a perfumed breeze,
And we are sick of the stupid blue of the sky,
Of English landscapes and complacent trees,
Men who use thunderbolts for playing marbles,
Women who twist lightning to knitting needles.
Here is a strange ship going by:
Let us go aboard and live an Odyssey.
Only romantics board enchanted ships.
We are on a hairy sea, each wave a beard
That juts and wags from cruel toothless lips,
In another universe from Ithaca.
This is the ship which Helen's wooers steered,
Love's laughable Pilgrim Fathers; we are far
From the familiar world. Maybe
Those meaningless things were better than this sea.
We have forgotten when we left the shore,
And now we cannot laugh at God or man;
We are deafened by a dull persistent roar,
Star shouting to star along a reckless sky;
The sea is like unruffled astrakan,
A blackened ridicule of errantry,
Where brave lunatic mariners
Are tumbled on the cogs of the universe.
Page(s) 49
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