Argos, Odysseus’s Dog The Charioteer

 

Argos, Odysseus’s Dog

(See The Odyssey 17.290–327)

Another hunting dog poem, i.m. Timothy Murphy

Argos, with your mange-scabbed coat,
Shipwreck of ribs, washed up among
The midden’s refuse, the mules’ dung,
Do you still track the wild goat

Through dreams of oregano and thyme?
You lift your head and prick your ears.
Voice that marooned you twenty years
Ago, sails back, still in its prime

To ask the swineherd why you sleep
Outside the walls, seething with fleas;
He speaks of breeding, pedigrees.
The ordure shifts, piled soft and deep.

Remember black ships rigged for Troy?
Quayside, just weaned, you whimpered. Stay,
He anchored you. And you obey:
You stay still. No-one croons “Good boy.”

Published in Able Muse, No. 27 (Winter 2019).

Timothy Iver Murphy (10 January 1951 – 30 June 2018) was an American poet and businessman who wrote of hunting with his beloved dogs.

 

The Charioteer

Delphi Museum

Lips apart, dry eyes steady,
He stands forever at the ready,

Fingers open, sensitive
To the horses’ take and give

(Although no single steed remains
At the end of tangled reins).

It is as if we are not here—
The way the patient charioteer

Looks beyond us, into space,
For some sign to begin the race.

He has stared down centuries.
No wave from us, no sudden breeze,

Will trick him now to a false start.
He has learned the racer’s art

To stand watchful at the gate,
Empty out the mind, and wait.

As long as it is in our power
We gaze—maybe for half an hour—

Before we turn from him to go.
Outside, the hills begin to glow,

Burnished by a brazen sun
Whose course now is almost run.

We shiver, and around us feel
Vanished horses plunge and wheel.

Alicia E. Stallings, Hapax: Poems. TriQuarterly Books, Northwestern University Press, 2006.