It was only trying to waste time
until I could politely leave Granny to her dying
and take the train home
that I really looked , for the first time in years,
around her living room. How could I
not have noticed it before?
There on the left hand wall (as you face
out through the conservatory
to the twelve tulip garden), Odysseus’ maids
hanging by their necks.
They’re leant forwards so horribly
as if daemons flying or
as if their feet blown backwards in the wind.
Telemachus is looking on bare-chested –
looking older than his nineteen or twenty years
and is that pity or confusion in his face?
One of them, picked out in yellow
on the wash blue sky, seems not yet dead
or wholly drained of vitriol. Her face
pushed forwards as you would
to spit. The bitterness perhaps
that she had no trial, that all this came
and went in an afternoon
after polishing the floor, before
she could grab the words to plead,
explain, beg mercy or farewell –
which words now unforthcoming.
Or maybe that is just the face you make.
Looking now it’s hard to tell.
