Penelope

I am imprisoned on a craggy isle –
O land of barren orchards, Ithaca,
My gaol, for all of long eternity
And there the hearth is shadowed by my guard;
I, harnessed to the loom, cannot escape –
The warp forever tangling with the woof,
My task that of Arachne: I must weave
Inconsequential threads into one cloth.
No vision for the distaff line, no hope
Of golden sunsets. We are but chattels,
Discarded when the need for us is gone.
While men may strive for glory, we remain
And spin away what little time we have.
What feats can I perform, what can I seek?
Shall I set sail and follow in the wake
Of him for whom I waited twenty years,
Confront also the dangers he may face
For all that he left me to wither here?
Or tarry and face a deadlier foe –
The suffocation of my mind and thought...
Or else for satisfaction of my soul
Embark upon a journey of mine own?
An aged wife I am, but not too old
To see the riches offered by the world,
With no false vision but with open eyes –
To see this world, and not Elysium.



I love Tennyson, and particularly 'Ulysses'. I also love both the Illiad and the Odyssey. Yet there is an undoubted heartlessness in Tennyson's Odysseus, who leaves his wife after she waited twenty years for him without a second thought. This poem was my response to that. It is written with many references to 'Ulysses', and in the same syllabic pattern.