On At Last Looking Into Chapman’s Homer

by Len Krisak (February 2015)

I’ve traveled little, but whatever realms

I’ve seen have shown a little less than gold

And goodly: elsewhere often underwhelms.

I mostly tend to read what I’ve been told

Are great demesnes—now, Chapman’s Iliad

And Odyssey. (God knows these couplets bowled

Him over—Keats—and face it: that’s not bad.

Fourteeners have been known to stop men cold.)

But as for planets swimming into kens,

Well, no—not one has robbed me of my breath,

Though some small comets blazoned what are men’s

And thickly fallen in their armed chatoyance,

“More sweet to Vultures than their wives”: the Troyans.

 

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