By claire healey, mzclaire@breathe. com
Date: 6 November 2000

Penelope Unbound

So you have come home to me, at last
Odysseus, my husband lost, come to claim what's rightly his. 
You appear windblown and aged, the man I loved
Scoured away by the years' rough passage - 
Unrecognised by any, save a half-blind, dying dog
And certainly unknown to these weakened eyes of mine. 

Since your leaving, milennia have marched
Like endless armies through this great house of yours,
But no new child's steps my husband, no pealing laughter
To temper out the great and twisted years; 
No daughters to bear the weight of weaving, 
Nor sons to guard against misfortune's fools, 
And no husband to hold, nor even corpse to mourn. 

Did you think my love unworthy, was that it? 
Did you contrive in all your famous trickery
To test the very length and depth of my devotion?
To punish me by wandering so far for so long?
Then know you this, my once beloved husband, 
I wove my love out on a thousand singing looms, 
Yet come the night and another cold dusk falling, 
Each last thread was carefully unsown.