Odysseus’s Apology to Anticlea

by Anastasios Mihalopoulos

Photo by Öz T. on Pexels

Here, at ocean’s mouth, I pour and pray.
Sea-water sloshes its tongue on the shore.
Scent of barley and burnt honey vex the air.
Urge the dead to drink from my cup.

I bleed a sheep. Black night
pours from its throat—the spirits come.
Clamor of armor and footsteps fill the beach,
men I could not save. Worse sounds came

from those I could have—from you
standing there, hair turned silver, an opaque gloom
running through your skin. I wish I could forget
what you said, how it was missing me,

your sunshine, my sharp mind, that made you
walk into the sea. I’ve been dreaming lately,
crows coughing up stones in the burnt fields of Troy.
I follow them, their human caws leading me along

the shore to watch the tide turn rocks
to faces. I wake before I recognize them.
Being gone so long, I struggled to remember
the lines of your face, your nose and gentle cheek

bones hiding eyes that watched me play
games of war—talk of ships and god-like
quests I imagined were far from home.
I thought of it as promise, that a ship and the sea

were a way of connecting. These, I realize,
were boy-thoughts, arrogant to the calamity
of departure. So many sons lost to the sea.
I know that’s why you thought to join me.

But how much can these waves hold?
How many souls until blue turns to blood?
Now, I think of undoing it all, coming back
or never leaving your arms. Each time I try

you slip away like the fabric of a dream.

---