I apologize for neglecting this blog of late! I've been working hard on schoolwork, not to mention poetry. The editor of Christendom's literary magazine was dejected by the low number of submissions this quarter to the point of writing a long rant in The Rambler, in which he exhorted the next generation of Catholic writers to stop partying and slacking, and write. I didn't really need this harangue, but I decided I'd submit more than one piece next time.

We read Tennyson's Ulysses in English class the other day. I, in the interests of avoiding my English homework, wrote a poem about the poem - a task which absorbed me for an hour or so. Alas, after I had written the poem my paper had not disapeared. Perhaps I will relate the way I finished my paper, but if I do, you will have to read it on Fiddleback Fever. Anyway, this is my poem, with Ulysses as the speaker. I still haven't made a title. If you think of a good one, tell me.

***

All is made ready.
The wine and the barley are stowed,
Everything needed and all my men ready.

The lowering hill path,
Night wind's rivercourse,
Drifts my feet seaward.

Stir on the cool shore. Lantern hangs over the wave.
Darkness binds up the olive tree's glitter,
Sends sleep on the echoing light-haunted cave.

Brine-clabbered hawsers,
Wind sough, slap of the swell.
The lull
and the low hull.
Full tide,
Blear-eye salt and the
Far gleam
Circuiting ever the Ocean Stream,
Farther, farther I fare on. Fare well.

II

The braided line in my hand turns
To her woven tress.
Sail-gathering, shiver of furls
To the sound of her dress.
I saw her distress.
I want to see asphodel at the end.
Those eyes will abide
When mine are closed, where shadows tend
The fever-glare of the mind...

Oh Athena!
What is this new thing I see,
What is that dark height
Wherefrom the seas reel and the birds flee?
This at last is a match for me
And a door on night.