The going forth is home.

Ars Poetica

Achilles, long after Troy,
ventured forth again,
and in the going out,
returned home to homelessness.

And what could he know but like Odysseus
slap of wave on bow
and the stories they tell
about the dear dance of Thanatos and Eros

and the loves,
triumphs and betrayals of ordinary men . . .

Odysseus, homeless on the wine-dark sea,
with aching heart
dreams of his Penelope
as he sails into infinity.

Heroes are the ones
move forward in the dark,
Seferis said as he groped on,
neither Thetis nor Circe enticing him,

but the slap of wave on shore,
scorching Mediterranean sun
"riveted" to a rose,
and the voices,
always all those many voices in a poet's ear,

begging him to pause
during war
to observe the certain sway
of a tall palm tree,

a sleepy Arab garden in the harsh sunlight

recalling the house that once was ours,
that was, for a moment,
a kind of Paradise.

But dreams can sour. And wars don't simply arise.
Paradis ne pas,
but is within,
waiting to be found
beyond the pain,
the suffering
to which we are not bound,
but to which we so tenaciously cling.

Paradise, Old Tom, the
Oirish revolutionary,
liked to say,
is a sometime thing.

And Elytis, that grand land-bound sailor
of dreams, reminds: Heaven and Hell
are made of the exact same things—
confirming Lao Tzu: Success and failure
each are mother of the other.

Heraclitus: The way up is the way down.

The sea retreats; the sea swells.
We need the story that only
the going-forth can tell. We need the tale
that spins the spell that gives us
eyes to see.

Thus, we grope, talking to ourselves,
unable to find
meaning in a growing darkness
wherein no meaning lies.

The heart sees far beyond the eyes.
This is no country for this old man.
I'll not find Byzantium.

My friend Ransom, no man's
idea of a pacifist, but a medic,
a humanist nonetheless,
gets it exactly right:
Peace is not idle inaction, but
a constantly negotiated
activity—
in the home or between nations.

I negotiate this poem with my Muse.
How could it be otherwise?
Some build prisons, some
write prisons,
and call them sanctuaries.

Between Eros and Thanatos,
a moment of enlightenment,
moment of bliss
amidst the redundant thunder of unholy
Ares.

Thus the oarsmen sing
against the pull of oar in water,
back bent to the rhythm
as sails unfurl the song.

In the poem of our lives,
there are many masters,
many tongues.
The seas are mysterious, deep and wide.

We listen to the rattle of the riggings
sailing on, on,
hungry and homeless,
sailing toward oblivion,

talking to ourselves
as if it mattered,
eyes fixed
on the rising smoke of precisely what
horizon?

Achilles with his bloody hands and aching heel,
Odysseus with his ears on fire,
Dante emerging from the bowels of Hell . . .
eyes peeled

skyward . . .
each with his heroic dream of Justice,
a dream of Paradise . . .

It is the dream itself, the listening,
the going-forth, singing,
that keeps us all alive.

We go down to the sea and set sail
for a world beyond war, knowing
we will never find it. We are not heroes.
We sail the Justice and the Mercy
because these boats need rowing.

And when our boats go down—
as, surely, all boats must drown—
we will not
walk upon the water
into the open arms of the Eternal Mother/Lover,

she whom we idealize in our robes of need
as the mind turns and the heart bleeds. . .

No. Not for us, salvation.
Sustained by a few essential metaphors—
the tale, the telling,
the mind’s music, the heart’s vision . . .

we venture out, each alone, to find
that the going-forth is home.


~Sam Hamill




Sam Hamill is Director of Poets Against War. "Ars Poetica" is from a collection, Measured by Stone, to be published by Curbstone Press. A volume of his literary essays and introductions, Avocations, will be published by Red Hen Press in April.