them in a line, the dying women
were described as thrushes spreading their wings,
doves or larks caught in a spring.
They were killed as a flock of birds, as undeserving
of the death of a single human being.
Though, first, in a colder, waking moment, the undisguised
Odysseus ordered the women to remove the corpses
from the great hall, to stack their lovers
in the yard. One cradling each beloved head,
another clutching at the feet,
the women became mere things-
their flesh a rag for scouring the furniture,
trying to scrub clear the appalling
table. Their last task
before being strangled-to dispose
of the earth itself, the blood-soaked floor
that Telemachus meticulously cut out,
so in the future--that narrow corridor
down which so many would be driven-a visitor
would not know she was invi ted into
a charnel house.
ANNIE FINCH
Landing Under Water, I See Roots
-for Rita Dove
All the things we hide in water
hoping we won't see them go–
(forests fallen under water
press against the ones we know)-
and they might have gone on growing
and they might now breathe above
everything I speak of sowing
(everything I try to love).
