Return of Ulysses

Ulysses kills the suitors close to a fragile bowl of milk
which a servant
with breasts henceforth pierced by arrows
was clasping
in its whiteness.

Surprise in the corpses' eyes.

Surprise in Ulysses's heart:
that great odyssey for such a homecoming,
a wife barely recognised, a servant butchered in error.

He collects himself. Tenderness
of the loom
of the bed
the sun on milk.

The long voyage crowded with monsters
now
is
a finger tracing exile's endless shore around the bowl's rim

the face reflected
in confines of liquid

and enough blue sky to tint the milk around it.