On Odysseys

We are reading The Odyssey for the World Literature course I am taking. One of the assignments for the class was to write our own prologue/poem in the style of The Odyssey's prologue. I had a lot of fun with this assignment. I've also been working on a poem from Odysseus's son Telemachus's point of view, but since this was technically the first poem I have written in a couple of months, I thought I would share it:

Speak, O Muse. Tell of him who walked within the dusk

and often wavered in his confidence, for he,

disdaining death and fearing life, instead betook

him to a world where all reality was like

a dream, and dreams likewise became reality.

This boy, this man, this wanderer and wonderer

gave way to Time's unceasing river's flow and passed

across the land and sea upon the backs of birds

with feathers fashioned out of steel and glass, and though

pursued by snows of Boreas, he came into

a country where the lofty spires called him out

of dreams and sped him on a quest for truth and hope--

those gifts elusive and divine, the which to seek

is to possess, and thus, to own means seek for life.

Through love's fair city and through Troy's begotten town,

the home of gods, he journeyed til he had appeased

Hephaestes' wrath, which long had barred his passage home

with fire and ash. He to his native soil then

returned, though foreign still he felt, and ever shall

for tis his gift and curse to never feel at rest.