The doors flapped open in Ulysses’ house,

The lolling latches gave to every hand,

Let traitor, babbler, tout and bargainer in.

The rooms and passages resounded

With ease and chaos of a public market,

The walls mere walls to lean on as you talked,

Spat on the floor, surveyed some newcomer

With an absent eye. There you could be yourself.

Dust in the nooks, weeds nodding in the yard,

The thick walls crumbling. Even the cattle came

About the doors with mild familiar stare

As if this were their place.

All round the island stretched the clean blue sea.

Sole at the house’s heart Penelope

Sat at her chosen task, endless undoing

Of endless doing, endless weaving, unweaving,

In the clean chamber. Still her loom ran empty

Day after day. She thought: “Here I do nothing

Or less than nothing, making an emptiness

Amid disorder, weaving, unweaving the lie

The day demands. Ulysses, this is duty,

To do and undo, to keep a vacant gate

Where order and right and hope and peace can enter.

Oh will you ever return? Or are you dead,

And this wrought emptiness my ultimate emptiness?”

She wove and unwove and wove and did not know

That even then Ulysses on the long

And winding road of the world was on his way.