Return To Troy

Going back to Ithaca

was such a pleasant journey,

but at the sacred moment of arrival

no smoke rose from the chimney,

and to his poor eyes

the old palaces seemed

like castles built on sand.

Nothing was as he'd left it—

Penelope unfaithful,

those he trusted gone,

and everywhere a deadness and a silence.

Before him a chasm, behind him a flood—

which was true, which illusion?

The return or the departure?

Going back to Ithaca

was such a pleasant journey,

as lovely as a fairy tale,

thinks the nostalgic traveller.

But suddenly in his thoughts

Troy rises up before him

and the journey begins again.

Nikos Ninolakis
Translated by Pavlos Andronikos

Published in Antipodes nos. 25/26 (1989) p. 11.