Ithaca
To Zbigniew Herbert
I would turn all your disquiet
into the perfect calm
with a view onto the sea.
The waves are numberless.
Once you thought it was their white fingers tugging,
but it was just the sea going gray on the shore.
You will watch birds in flight,
but lose your own longing to travel.
The horizon no longer summons.
The promised land is no land at all; the undwellable
dwells within us.
You subtract yourself from all questions.
You cease counting gods, heroes
and grains of sand.
Your head slumps into the enormity of waiting.
The existence of the shoreline has been proven by more
than one man,
more than yourself.
Tiredness brings a sense of knowledge.
There comes an exhaustion which knows all.