goodbye to the ionian

The latitudes from which we, pale sailors,

Accustomed to altogether colder waters

And insistent rain, are drawn,

Are northern ones; the voice

We hear in the wind says north;

Our hills whisper the same word;

North is their message, northern their faith,

And if, as is perhaps understandable,

We head south, only too ready

To believe that claims of a gentler Nature,

One receptive to olive trees and seas

That have too little room to be

Truly angry, then that is because

We hear another part of our psyche,

One that North herself has scolded

For being altogether unsuited

To a landscape of hills and mists

Appropriate to hills; of hills

That know what lies in store for them

As early as September these days,

When summer makes its excuses

For its behaviour, and leaves us to it.

Not imagining that we could ever

Fit as naturally into this world

As do the easy-living residents,

Who may have forgotten their classical heritage,

But who are proud enough of it anyway,

We nonetheless try to recall

Those bits that remain—the odd phrase,

The occasional memory of gods

And who they were, although it is

Only too easy to get them mixed up

And attribute to one a temper tantrum

Or a sulk that belonged to another.

Others have done the same,

Succumbed to the temptations

Of a beckoning South,

Famously so, in some cases,

Adopting a cause or subscribing

To a mood, a way of being,

As the romantic poets did;

Keats answered the call

Of shores very similar to these;

He was not the last poet

To make the understandable mistake,

Of getting too close

To a particular sort of beauty;

We’re wiser now: we understand

That mists, though charming,

May at the same time be miasmic.

Of course, those who go elsewhere

Have to return; home awaits,

And smiles at the old story

That South presented,

Says: these things are illusions,

But nevertheless do the trick, enable you

To survive a winter, ignore

The things you’d like to ignore,

By simply closing your eyes and

Seeing Ithaca again, and its sea,

And a shore of rounded stones,

Blue and white, washed smooth,

On which Odysseus himself

Set foot in coming home.