Odysseus Poem by Michael Cayley

He was scarcely a model for his age:
Circe, Calypso both had him
without demur, as did forgotten slave-girls
who smoothed tensions on the plains round Troy.

A man like that could not miss out
on the sirens. After sailing by,
still tied to his mast, he watched them jump
from the rocks and shrugged off as hysteria
their drowning of failure in green waters.

And who but Odysseus crafty enough
to sleep round the world and then steal
a reputation for liking hearth and home;
to trail a wake of broken hearts
and, safe from the wrecks, pretend to posterity
like a dull husband that the thought of his dear
Penelope had always been drawing him home?