Curse Of Circe

“Prince of swine,”

(she whispers)

“lie back in lissome ease
and let me act your implicit skin,
your own hard won fleshly envelope.”


Toothsome in twilight,
bright of eye and rouge of lip,
swaying breast and hip,
she shimmers softly
as an antic antelope at dusk.


“Telemachus?”

(she whispers again)


“Send him word if you wish
and tell him:

‘Make ready for my return.
Your father outlasted Troy
and every aftermath, and surrenders
now the sweet paradise of half-life,
less than god and more than man,
to take again his throne in Ithaca
or die.”


Quietly as the waterpourer at dawn
she glides, mirroring moon and
infusing color into the lie of life.

“Your lady Penelope?”

(she finds full voice)


“That dodgy unraveling hypocrite! Listen:
I will have your own image sail to Ithaca,
carved itchy, crack-brained, and ancient,

hairy-nosed and hairy-eared,

lurking to uncover whose scent and faith
are true.

Afterward, a truer image will astound
the bitch, slay salivating suitors, and
lynch your lady’s maids,

to live unhappily with her ever after,

and so preserve your name and fame and honor
avenged and shining.”


(Odysseus laughs.)


“In the while,”

(Circe lisps)


you, truest Ulysses, most lying and wiled of all Greeks,
will have Circe of a hundred ivory thighs,
many-eyed and bowing, serve you goddess-like
day and night in this glistened palace.

(Ulysses listens.)

Stay a spell, Odysseus! Home is here where
maddest lust is!”

Cunning trinity
masking as the hinge
of many unities slowly fades away.

E.A. Costa

[copyright eac 09/88]