‘Odysseus to Telemachus’

Abstract

My Telemachus, the Trojan War / is over. Who was victorious - I do not remember. / It must have been the Greeks: / only the Greeks could have forsaken so many corpses / abroad … / And, nevertheless the way leading / home turned out to be too long, / as if Poseidon had, while we were there / wasting time, stretched out space. / It is not known to me where I am, / what is in front of me. Some sort of filthy island, / bushes, buildings, snorting swine, / an overgrown garden, some sort of queen, / grass and stones … Dear Telemachus, / all islands resemble one another / when you have been wandering for so long, and your brain / is already confused, trying to count the waves, / your eye, soiled by the horizon, weeps, / and the watery meat obstructs the hearing, / I don’t remember how the war finished, / and how old you are now, I don’t remember. / / Grow tall, my Telemachus, grow. / Only the gods know whether weTl see each other again. / Even now you’re not the young boy you were / the one I held the bullocks back from. / If it were not for Palamedes we would have lived together. / But, perhaps, he was right: without me / you are spared the Oedipus complex, / and your dreams, my Telemachus, are sinless.