AT THE END

His small rooms were filled with souvenirs
So extensions were quickly slammed together
Once it was clear that the suitors' ghosts –

Sighted on an old-fashioned boat
With masts of bone and cobweb sails
Riding against the wind towards Phaecia --
Were coming to see the dying Telemachus.
He lived among us here, had children,

In the long years after Ithaca was forbidden him.
We assumed these lordly shades of men
Princes, warriors, priests and magicians
Came to gloat or to extract revenge long delayed
But they seemed to see the dying old man

As if he was still the half-orphan child
They'd  helped to raise, spending nights
Comforting him, telling him tall stories
Making little animals of cedarwood and cypress.
Their ship’s spiderspun sails billowing with winds
None of us on shore could feel.