CIRCE

‘Circe,’ he cried over the water between us. His voice rang the air like struck bronze. ‘My daughter came here.’

Odysseus is not sailing on the Mediterranean but through the fears and desires of a man’s life. The gods are not distant creators but elements within us: their careless pitilessness, their flaky and transient interests, their indifference, their casual selfishness, their deceit, their earth-shaking footfalls.

Now moons decline and rise, Dead metaphors that looked alive. And you about to die Out past the water-clock of tides Naming and renaming your desires. You rode in wind And scarred the cheek Like the edge of an autumn leaf. I put you in your hollow ship With wine and bread to drift The wine-dark sea. You put me In my hollow ship. A memorized part of