HOMER DOES NOT MENTION HIM
Doug Anderson
Now follow one soldier home to Argos,
not Agamemnon nor Ajax nor Diomedes
but Petros the stone-cutter with his limp
and ruined shoulder from swinging a short-sword
all those years. Lungs rotten from the choking
yellow dust, sleeping cold nights
on the plain under a spear-propped shield,
heart hard as his heels from killing.
Not the sleek, oiled body of an Achaean prince
but Petros with his overlarge head,
beard like a boar's bristles.
Home in his little village
on the gull-spattered cliffs above the sea
he waits at the door of his stone hut
for his wife to recognize him,
not as Penelope knew Odysseus disguised
but as a woman who sees a husband, only older,
something unnameable gone out of him.
And then he stammers,
We had three children when I left now there are four.
And the wind, snarling up the old road,
swirls a handful of dust over them,
a benediction against the bone-knowing
of what silence brings
beyond the clunk of the goat's bell.