PenelopeIs it Ulysses that approaches from the east,
The interminable adventurer? The trees are mended.
That winter is washed away
------- Wallace Stevens: "The World as Meditation."I
The years were never easy, but the first years
Of the long war were easier, while she waited
As other women waited, when, like them,
She could perceive a strict, invisible line
Between her mind and the Scamandrian plain
Where common men joined battle under him.
There was a season she could say his name
And no one noted it, or blamed her for
Those fair, particular syllables because
His name was on the tongue of every woman.
Continually she overheard her servants
Saying "Ulysses," washing the heavy linens
He had lain in with her, buffing the cups
His mouth had touched. At such times she would shape
His name and mildly pass among them, keeping
Herself immensely silent, marveling
To come upon a crafty, public man-
Wily Ulysses, whom she did not know.
She waited as the other women waited,
Wondering whether to her as to some of them
Time would give satisfaction, bringing him home.II
After the war was over, waiting became
A world of meditation. She drew back
Into the savage dream behind her eyes.
She never said his name. Her serving women
Did not speak of him. Their husbands home,
The Scamandrian plain receded from their minds.
But if she chanced to touch his name written
On household things, she would become abstracted,
Wondering what was the one so named, and where
Was he, really, outside of her mind, now Ilium
Was taken, the great warriors all dispersed
Who had with him seized arms ten years before.
She dreamed he lay in Calypso's arms, or someone's,
But that did not matter. Calypso, dreamed,
Quickened no jealousies. Imagined winds
Over imagined oceans hurt no man.
Mere theoretical accidents touched his image
Only. He escaped in the end chimeras
Of her brain. Safe in her dream, he came
Continually homeward. Rarely was her mild
Apparent patience troubled. Yet sometimes
Ulysses was announced. When her women spoke
His name again, she, nearly believing,
Proceeded to the hall. Coming from dream
Carefully, she beat back the actual body
Of her hope with hammers of her heart.
For they slandered him. It never was Ulysses.
And yet the coming of some common man
Quickened the central terror under dream
That he would never come, that actual death
Had taken him, or that a true Calypso
Held him prisoner. But her speech was even
Over the strange excitement mastering her-
"That man is not Ulysses"-glad to shape
Again the marvelous syllables of his name
Out of her own impassioned meditation.III
Slowly she changed. She matched her name with his.
She become "Mother" to Telemachus
And "Madam" to her servants, but as the dream
Took her gradually, she assumed a level,
Pure serenity. She kept apart
From the riotous laughter of the hall, staying
Within her chambers, weaving upon her loom
A shroud for old Laertes, who, in the vineyard,
Mended the trees-ten apples, thirteen pears,
And forty figs. Although the insolent wooers
Wasted the substance of her husband's house
She made the syllables of her own name a dream
Equal to his, and so evaded them.
When they presumed to call her down among them,
She obeyed patiently, but a silence fell
Over their barbarous clamor. They observed
Amazed her excellent mortal clarity,
And no man dared articulate her name.
Is it Ulysses that approaches from the east,
The interminable adventurer? The trees are mended
That winter is washed away.