He will not return, your Odysseus, this time he will not return.
No Penelopes with their spindles are waiting for him
by the steady hum of the spinning wheels.
The Cassandras are silent, the voiceless Cassandras are silent.
And Achylles without his armor is frail like a child
and falls like grass.

The gods will play and punish and avenge and die.
But Ithaca and Troy will rise again - from the night,
from smoke, from flames.
And the Homers - blind and all-seeing -
shall walk through a thousand years,
from South to North, and call
each country by its name.