In honor of National Poetry Month, I'm posting some of my poems on my blog.
Penelope by Dante Garbriel Rossetti 1868
In Homer's epic, the Odyssey, Penelope is the wife of the hero Odysseus. When he doesn't return from sea, it is presumed he's dead. Suitors come by to try and win Penelope's hand in marriage now that she's a widow, but she insists that she cannot remarry until she has finished weaving a shroud for Odysseus' father, Laertes. Every day she sits at her loom to weave and every night she unravels her weaving in order to buy time, for she is sure that Odysseus will one day return home to her.
This poem comes out of the story
Penelope
Each day I sit by the fire
and weave a shroud
with the thread of my tears.
Would be lovers pass by the window,
the cool shadows of their bodies fall
through the doorway.
Their wooing voices are carried away
by the wind and only
the click of my loom fills the silence.
I turn my longing into cloth,
touchable, I can run it under my fingers.
When night comes, I unravel my hunger
and send it to the dark skies, hoping
the warp of stars will find you.
Once finished with the night work,
I fall into a sea of dreams--
gold breaking at sunrise,
billowing white sails--
the linen promise of your return.
This poem comes out of the story
Penelope
Each day I sit by the fire
and weave a shroud
with the thread of my tears.
Would be lovers pass by the window,
the cool shadows of their bodies fall
through the doorway.
Their wooing voices are carried away
by the wind and only
the click of my loom fills the silence.
I turn my longing into cloth,
touchable, I can run it under my fingers.
When night comes, I unravel my hunger
and send it to the dark skies, hoping
the warp of stars will find you.
Once finished with the night work,
I fall into a sea of dreams--
gold breaking at sunrise,
billowing white sails--
the linen promise of your return.
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