Homeric Musings
1. Odyssey II.96-109, trans. Lattimore
The suitors of Penelope
cannot have been too bright
if she could weave Laertes’s shroud
and then unweave by night.
Their tragic gullibility
is worthy of our tears,
that such a simple stratagem
could work for four long years.
And though they schemed and prayed to win
Odysseus’s bed,
they weren’t the sharpest bronze-age tools
in the Achaian shed.
2. Odyssey XVII.541-545, trans. Lattimore
In Homer’s Odyssey, a sneeze
would certify your prophecies.
But what a hiccup might betray,
the epic poem does not say.
Kelly Scott Franklin plays the ukulele. His poetry and translations have landed in Able Muse, Driftwood Press, Thimble Literary Magazine, Literary Matters, Jesus the Imagination, Iowa City Poetry in Public, The Ekphrastic Review, and elsewhere. His essays and reviews can be found in The Wall Street Journal, Commonweal, The New Criterion, and other venues. In his spare time, he teaches American Literature and the Great Books at Hillsdale College. He lives in Michigan with his wife and two daughters, who sometimes appreciate his humor.