#polypoetes

It hadn’t been long enough for them to retrace their happiness together, to make up for the years they had lost, for which the much-enduring man would forever grieve—when he thought of the ten years spent fighting to live on, of the ten more years wasted fighting to get back, back to the amount of time all too short to keep a smile on her face—he raged and wept and crazed and yet the cruel world responded just the same, as thrice the lifeless hand that had grown cold kept slipping from his clutch, as twice the heart of his ached to think of the years of reunion he was bereaved of, as once and for all the sight of the funeral pyre devouring his Penelope sowed the seed of melancholy in his great heart. This would be something he never felt capable of accepting—no, not the cruelty of the truth that she was nevermore here, no longer able to soothe his muscles of exhaustion with all her caresses, to ease his mind of sorrow with all her whispers. He just couldn’t accept it—no, perhaps he never could.

He began to dissociate—first it was the lingering hope that she was still living with him, somewhere in their room waiting beside the olive-tree bed. Every day he still muttered a good morning to the emptiness beside his pillow, every night he pushed open the bedroom door still hoping to catch a glimpse of her shape. But the nothingness frightened him, as much as the stormy sky that was to threaten his ships with a tempest—but sometimes the storm failed to come, as if the sign was never meant to be true; likewise, he found everything about this unreal, as if Penelope had never truly been gone, as if he himself was still trapped somewhere in a hallucination of all this grievance, as if the tear-soaked face never belonged to the Telemachus he should know. No, perhaps he had never returned at all—that must be it. That must’ve meant that none of this was real. His Penelope must’ve still been waiting for him in a homeland he had never returned to, his Telemachus must’ve still been hoping to meet a father for the first time. This must’ve been a dream—perhaps a figment of his imagination. Or perhaps it was real—just not something that happened to his family, back in his Ithaca. Then nothing he had seen so far could be trusted—not even the rocky landscape, nor the forested “Neriton”, nor the harbor that lay beside the Naiads’ cave—none of this would be real ever since the goddess unveiled the mist around him…

It must’ve been somewhere else—but where? Could it be that he was still trapped in Ogygia, just a victim to that goddess’s lust? But there was no hand clasping his chest at night, as the scent of olive saturated the room still. Could it be that he was just having yet another dream on board? But the surrounding felt so empty—where were all his crewmates? Oh, perhaps it was all but his own fabrication that fooled even himself—returning home? What a lie. Home is never in sight. Or…perhaps it was the bright-eyed goddess’s trick all along—yes, with a false hope of return, she must’ve fooled me like what she did with Ajax, when she unveiled the mist shrouding this land. This is never Ithaca to start with—no, so the Phaeacians had never brought me home.

Perhaps he’d begin conjecturing a “reality” for him—a false memory for himself to believe in, just to cope with this grief. The conviction that he had never returned to Ithaca started to grow on him, as he conjured a suspicion that he was trapped in someone else’s household in another land—perhaps Thesprotia, where the great Theseus was fabled to have been imprisoned. Just like himself. So it was never his Penelope that breathed out her last breath—this must’ve been a local queen bearing a face resembling Penelope so much (except for the wrinkles, which he had never found in his memory of her face), perhaps also a king’s widow in a kingdom haunted by opportunistic nobles, a queen hoping to restore the kingdom to justice by gaining his support through marriage—Callidice, perhaps, for it was the righteous justice she sought in her country? And this son he had had—so would he not be my Telemachus after all? It pained him to realize just how he couldn’t find out, when he knew even nothing of what the real Telemachus would’ve looked like. But for the many feats this son of mine and I have done together, perhaps I shall remember him as Polypoetes? Odysseus didn’t ask—even if he did, never would he believe in anything they said now. There was a war also—but who was triumphant? He remembered a city in flames, a people in flight—perhaps it didn’t matter at all who had won the fight. To Odysseus, only in home would his sole relief lie. And this…this was not home. It just could not be. Not to him.

So Odysseus began convincing himself that it was for the death of Callidice he grieved, someone he’d love as fiercely as he did Penelope. And each day he would come to the shores just as before, mourning for his homecoming back to his home, his family, despite how his Polypoetes kept begging him to look back, to hold his dear Telemachus in arms like he always wanted to, to open his eyes and see the crest of forested Neriton once more…Odysseus only turned away, taking no heed. At some point he’d even try to escape, from this very place he wished to return to, from this reality that he deemed fancy—he tried to build his craft secretly and this time there was no goddess to uncover his plan. He handed the throne to Polypoetes saying words of pride, with Polypoetes too caught up in happiness to figure out what could’ve been wrong. Everything’s wrong. Home is still waiting somewhere—and home I must see. Be the king to be loved by this land, son. Better subdue your people to the good, when I alone shall return to mine.