I.
I had a false dream of the Odyssey. It was in
a sleep dark as carrion birds; I was in a cradle of flames, suckled by imminent death. The wheel of stars had burned out, drowned out by a city’s pyre,
to dim, dark-eyed myths, and
I was on the peak of a wave, close enough to see cataracts in the eyes of the sky.
My sailors, dying, yelled to me, across spume and deso lation; they all called me
Odysseus, but the name was a dull whine, leaking across my brain. I knew so little. Why was I on the sea? I knew There was a wife, ahead/behind/beside me, and I was walking towards her, backwards.
And there was a son and his head was knitted with flames, and there was a son, and he was in a great house full of men and bows they could not string, and
there was a son and he was doomed and his name was Achilles, no Turnus, no Tel
and then there was the crash of lightning—of time—and the dreamscape screamed like steel
on steel, and there was a false dream, and I was on my knees, and I was begging:
Enough of the serpent and the flame; enough of the golden bough; enough of ruined cities; and Rumor; and Fate; and prophecy; enough of huntresses; enough of mothers; enough of dewy clouds; enough
It was a fugue of misery I could never allow in my waking. Even so, I was ashamed. I woke, alone there, with the severed tongues of cities who could tell my story writhing still. I did not understand why we were sailing; I had nothing to return to, not even my name.
I, notOdysseus, see two gates: one of horn, one of ivory. II.
I had a false dream of the Iliad and the world was cloaked in steam of doused coals;
and the rage was an undead, rotting heart. Its arterial veins were
sludging, clotted with the blankness of grief. I had not even the hope to burn.
And Achates was falling from the city walls, but his face was all wrong, in Greek arms.
And my wife was at the parapet and her name was a notHelen,
and her hair was white as ash, and I did not know who I was, except that I was meant for the earth, and the earth would not take me—they would not let the earth take me. My mother was cooing at my ear, lovely as a slap. They all called me Hector, but
I knew I was not him, even if I felt our blood rhyme. I felt his blood in my mouth, pinking roping, rabid saliva. Then he was beneath me, and his name was Achilles, no Turnus, but he was not my son. And he called me Achilles. I look to the parapet, to the serpent and the flame:
there was no wife, no son. No mercy from the Iliad, lurching like a zombie through my life. But I see a sister, a river, playing with the light.
I paused, hypnotized. But, in the false dream, my arm raised itself. He begged for mercy, from Achilles; but I was no Achilles. No glory, only its shambling pantomime. There were two gates. I, notHector notAchilles, pass through the ivory.
III.
I woke. He was there, even though I had known his burial in my dream. Like suncattle, mooing on the spit; he spoke now to me, dead (dead in the future, and so dead now). “Hector,” I asked, “are you made of horn or ivory?” And his blood-dappled cheek was bright with sorrow “Aeneas,” my name was butchered like a stag
in all the soft bramble mouths of places that were not my home, but never in his, never by him,
“I am made of flesh, alone.”