Weep More Deeply

I took a spontaneous spring break outing to Galveston today with my friend Matt, to celebrate the beautiful weather and our corresponding days off. Along the way we spotted a tag that looked like it said "Argos" (but alas, probably not). How funny, I thought, watching the small dog play behind it. It reminded me of this Michael Collier poem that, like The Odyssey, I have grown to love:

Argos

If you think Odysseus too strong and brave to cry,
that the god-loved, god-protected hero
when he returned to Ithaka disguised,
intent to check up on his wife

and candidly apprize the condition of his kingdom,
steeled himself resolutely against surprise
and came into his land cold-hearted, clear-eyed,
ready for revenge--then you read Homer as I did,

too fast, knowing you'd be tested for plot
and major happenings, skimming forward to the massacre,
the shambles engineered with Telemakhos
by turning beggar and taking up the challenge of the bow.

Reading this way you probably missed the tear
Odysseus shed for his decrepit dog, Argos,
who's nothing but a bag of bones asleep atop
a refuse pile outside the palace gates. The dog is not

a god in earthly clothes, but in its own disguise
of death and destitution is more like Ithaka itself.
And if you returned home after twenty years
you might weep for the hunting dog

you long ago abandoned, rising from the garbage
of its bed, its instinct of recognition still intact,
enough will to wag its tail, lift its head, but little more.
Years ago you had the chance to read that page more closely

but instead you raced ahead, like Odysseus, cocksure
with your plan. Now the past is what you study,
where guile and speed give over to grief so you might stop,
and desiring to weep, weep more deeply.

-Michael Collier

He's right, of course. I raced through my first reading of The Odyssey. But through coincidence, I did notice the tears upon second reading, when I took a semester course devoted to variations on the story. In fact, I wrote a paper on the role of tears in several authors' adaptations. So here, dear readers, is the line:

"But still he wept for his native country, trailing down the shore
where the wash of sea on shingle ebbs and flows,
his homesick heart in turmoil."

And this is what I was thinking about as I ate my ice cream and sat unprotected in the sun.