Among Other Things, Joyce Said

Ulysses was about “ineluctable certitude
and the affirmation of the void.”
The one word everyone knows
Speaks for itself, and facts, like the body,
that hermetic organ, sealed in its own warm juices,
take on a beauty of their own.
The Big Yes and The Big No
ply their oily questions and answers,
push and pull, until tendon answers tendon,
bone answers bone,
and the wind shakes barley.

Even the Gods couldn’t change Fate.
Zeus wept at the death of Sarpedon,
his half-human son, consoled, if Gods are consoled,
by whatever engendered the fire that turns
bone wrapped in fat to smoldering ash.

Lots of certainty for Homer who knew
his listeners would reach for their spears
when the suitors abused Penelope.
Paris, the pouter pigeon, swelled up
with the truth of his member,
the courage and morality of a gland.
Helen in the end, murmured her regrets,
which is more than most of them did.

Blazes Boynon, another puffed up pigeon.
Molly has her doubts about him
when he pats her behind like the rump
of a racehorse he is certain will win,
before the dark horse, makes it home.
She loves him, she loves him not.
What is “the word everyone knows?”

Sooner or later, we all deal with “The Big No,”
which also speaks for itself from across the abyss,
assumes the position, neck outstretched,
hisses like a goose, and eats its own children.
The rest is all hearsay and second hand experience,
what we hear on the street or read in the Freeman’s Journal
that Bloom sold ads for and carried under his arm.

Young Steven Daedelus, wet and green
the imperfect prince of a bankrupt king
sets out on the same waters
we all cross, behind our special oar,
not yet lying with our gear on our chest
slathered in pitch and oil, soon to light up
the “limb loosening” darkness.

Or is it as simple as that kidney, in the beginning of Ulysses,
a bit overcooked, sealed in its juices,
left frying in the pan.

As simple as whatever is exchanged between us at this moment,
mute as the currents of the ocean
or this hermetic vessel, sleek- hulled enough
to ride out the storm, or wait out the doldrums
while we find our seat at the rowing bench,

dip in the oars and pull, pull
til we get the thing moving again.
Until the right wind comes up
to take us out to the open sea
where we look to Orion and the Pole Star
to guide us home, to Ithaca
Or that narrow house on Eccles Street
where we lay head to foot in our feathery bed,
navigate the swells, and doubts,
from beneath the scented sheets.

The musk-blown Yes fills the room
in blowsy clouds of memory,
long perfumey breaths that shut our eyes
which is not the darkness of “limb loosening death.”
and we listen to the warm sap run
in the living tree of our marriage