Pàdraig MacAoidh (Peter MacKay)
Odysseus
You are right not to trust me to return to Ithaca,
the withered plants, tumbledown walls, lean-tos,
that will not weather an eleventh winter;
to suspect me Achilles, after all,
as you try to remember a sore heel among my complaints,
a slight limp on my left.
Was I arrogant enough to think myself a God?
How far – precisely –
did my interest in young men go?
I wish I could reassure you. But all I know
is one day I will doubt this island
Ithaca, and the next, and set off
home, not home, not home, home