Dearest, you who have moved with me
as the waves to the pull of the moon,
You are leaving me now.
I know I am not the only moon to your sea.
There is another who sways you to her tune.
Her name is scrawled in the furrows of your brow.
But the tears in your eyes and your heartache
Should they not be mine?
I who live on this island, immortal and alone?
You are leaving me a prisoner in your wake,
You with your talk of crooked highlands and fragrant pine
And rugged crags. Dangerous talk, I should have known.
Now I close my eyes and dream
Not of the sweetness of the cypress
Nor of familiar violet-eyed meadows,
But of birds that spin and gleam
high above the land's caress.
You have turned me into another Echo
Stupidly repeating the names of places and people I will never know.
"Calypso is remembered most for her role in Homer's Odyssey, in which she keeps the fabled Greek hero Odysseus on her island, Ogygia, to make him her immortal husband. According to Homer, Calypso kept Odysseus prisoner for seven years ... During this time they sleep together, although Odysseus soon comes to wish for circumstances to change, and longs for his wife Penelope who is at home in mountainous Ithaca..
His patron goddess Athena asks Zeus to order the release of Odysseus from the island, and Calypso is told to set Odysseus free, for it was not his destiny to live with her forever."
"The strong god glittering left her as he spoke,
and now her ladyship, having given heed
to Zeus's mandate, went to find Odysseus
in his stone seat to seaward —tear on tear
brimming his eyes. The sweet days of his life time
were running out in anguish over his exile,
for long ago the nymph had ceased to please.
Though he fought shy of her and her desire,
he lay with her each night, for she compelled him.
But when day came he sat on the rocky shore
and broke his own heart groaning, with eyes wet
scanning the bare horizon of the sea."
