THE PLAYER, TOO, IS A PRISONER

 

THE PLAYER, TOO, IS A PRISONER

                --for Jim Hanlen

There is no scriptorium window

in this house. However,

walking with hoses yesterday,

about to lift them into a winter

box, I turned into the overhang

of the Mothership which dealt

with me swiftly. The blow

put me on my back, re-

injuring my tailbone

I busted 30 years ago

in the YMCA basement

when I fell off the shower stool.

Emily Wilson’s Odyssey

translation points out that both

Odysseus and Telemachus

are only sons, more trouble

for the world. She has several

things to say about men.

Alongside her Odyssey,

on the floor, I have

Robert Fitzgerald and Stephen Mitchell.

All of this marginalizes me.

My notations over half a century

are contained in Fitzgerald’s

translation, originally published

in 1963, the year I graduated

from high school. God forbid.

That blow knocks the music out of me.

Mitchell puts the second visit

to Hades from Book 24

into an appendix, odd,

and while keeping Athena

in the form of Mentor,

ends his homecoming,

in body and voice.

Fitzgerald finishes,

she kept the form and voice of Mentor,

and Wilson, still in her guise as Mentor.

The Iliad wearies me like MSNBC.

Inside the story-final, in Hades, now,

listening to Agamemnnon,

Wilson hears it best, telling

of Haephaestus’ double-handled

gold urn with bones and ashes

of both Achilleus and Patroclus.

That’s about all I want

adding Book 8 which Wilson

calls Songs of A Poet.

Into this, my friend in Alaska

walks with his sticks into a coffee shop

where chess players gather around boards

and play without buying. My friend’s

attracted to Borges’ poem, Ajedrez.

A poem as mean as chess itself.

Borges. Torre homérica. A corrupt bishop

and the attacking pawns: los peones agresores.

Como el otro, este juego es infinito--

the game of love never-ending. To Jim Hanlen:

¿Qué dios detrás de Dios?

What god beyond God? My ranked friend

laughing at seminarians who remained, a holy man,

crying before those who gather in the cafe.

Before this batalla armada he chose the poem.

Jim Bodeen

26 October 2023