Fake semblances of Odysseus, we wander over the planet
while at home our Penelopes, formerly smiling,
have suddenly gone serious
and taken to the weaving of winding-sheets…
It’s winter now, our galleys are burdened with frost,
an evil north wind wails over grey seas,
the stars, moreover, are so inhumanly abstract.
We did not stay behind with the lotus-eaters,
were not broken apart by Charybdis and Scylla,
but are consumed with the consciousness
that, look, the struggle is not yet over
and at home the suddenly serious Penelopes
Famous Achaeans, what was the worth of your empty chatter?
Did you make sacrifices to Poseidon,
the dull-brained but mighty? Have you ever been able
to challenge him with brave deeds? Did you ever do so?
You have given us food, but otherwise there is nothing
but nimble words to lament or juggle with –
that’s all you’ve been able to do,
famous Achaeans.
Fake semblances of Odysseus, we wander over the planet.
The sea is weaving a winding-sheet of our sighs.
The past is sunken in fog, thick fog hides Ithaca’s fate.
Oxford, 1956
Ever more frightening, ever more rapacious,
barbarian incursions are troubling
the Empire of Autumn.
And galloping on, the northerly wind
screeches through cloud-crevices, shears off
leafy crowns, tears down
beech-tree robes the colour of sealing-wax,
shedding their heavy blood,
cracking its whip at defencelessly shuddering maples –
and how the gold coins keep falling!
Down threadbare avenues, past gap-toothed palings
the raider goes clattering by; he throws
a firebrand into a chestnut-tree, and whoosh!
leaves whirl and fly up into
an air-woven hoop of flame. There’s no one by
to save the treasures, the infidel
can pillage unhindered, there are now
only scattered watchtowers of silver fir left standing.
And still the conquest is incomplete. It’s in vain
that the frost-riders patrol down by the river, in vain
that the Khan exacts his ransom from the milder
October colours, from sky-blue and green;
the survivors learn how to live. As naked
as cornstalks rent and torn, and with earth’s bitterness.
Once the marauders have cleared off, their savage
symbols will also melt and trickle down the gardens – and then
all of a sudden the new
but eternal year will rise and raise with sunshine a still more
beautiful empire.