Odysseus Hears of the Death of Kalypso

All their songs are of one hour

Before dawn, when the birds begin.

I sing another.

In helpless midday, at the hour

Even sparrows have no heart to shrill

Comes news . . . Suddenly, the unimaginable

Needs imagination and finds none.

Violet ocean only nothing.

Smoke of thyme and of cedar,

Ornate birds, nothing.

Even a god who came here,

Hearing a sweet voice,

Would find only old fires now,

Brittle in the blackened trees.

She was mast and sail. She was

A stillness pregnant with motion,

Adorable to me as, all my life,

I have hidden a cruel, secret ocean

In sinews and in sleep and cowardice.

She forgave me. Once, she wept for me.

Our child died then, and she is with him.