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ODYSSEUS
I have come back as a stone falls to earth.
I have come back from the
loneliness of the world
to the sunlit hills and meadows that gave me birth.
My heart is a ship, and all her
sails are furled.
I have grown old in the wilderness of the seas;
I have felt the world slipping
from under my feet;
but now I am home at last where the olive trees
sleep in the silver dusk, and
the flowers are sweet.
For though the heart grow desolate, thought it roam
forever in vain the ways of
earth, in quest
of high and lovely things, yet it comes home
in the end to the waiting arms,
and finds its rest.
But I shall hear in dreams the sea that swirls
about those hungry rocks, and
the wild gulls’ cries;
and always I’ll remember the singing girls –
the pale beseeching hands, and
the pitiful eyes.
© A.R.D. Fairburn
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