Polyphemus
(After: J.W.M. Turner)
At dawn they’d spiked his Cyclopean eye
As he still deeply dreamed in stupored sleep.
Sightlessly bloodied, he had heard their shouts
As, from beneath his giant sheep, they dropped
And rushed to where their vessels waited near.
Roaring with pain, and hungry for revenge,
He’d groped his way along familiar tracks
In murderous pursuit.
And now he looms,
Cloudy against the rising sun, taller
Than beetling cliffs, from which he fiercely hurls
Huge boulders at those fleeing ships that bear
Odysseus and his crews from blinded rage;
Whist they set hurried sails once more, frantic to find
That distant homeland which obsessed each nomad mind.
