The Pequod Classicist
By: Lina Buividavičiūtė
By: James Zaferopolos
Far, was our Ithaca,
Far from the spirit’s
Longed-for home,
As though Nantucket
Seaport were our version
Of the shores of ancient
Greece, lapped by
Old Homer’s wine-dark
Sea. The peg-leg’s
Mind, tormented by
The whited shiboleth
Which, years ago,
Had swum off
With his limb,
Became old Ahab’s
Subject of revenge,
Which had become for him
The embodiment of nature’s
Wrath, as though
Whatever nature does
Could be held accountable
By men.
Old Ahab was, perhaps,
In this regard, the opposite
Of ruthless King Ulysses,
Whom the sea-god sought
Revenge upon, for having gouged
Out of Poseidon’s son and heir
The one good eye the fates
The allotted him, wherewith
That misbegotten creature
Might survey that narrow island
He was tasked with guarding, ‘
Til Ulyses plucked it out.
Pity to think how both these men
Believed themselves to be
Worthy opponents to the gods.
Pity that, in the end, it was
Their crews would pay
They owed the universe
For their presumption:
Ahab’s crew who sank beneath
The waves; Ulysses’ crew,
Would be given up as
Sacrificial swine, so that
The clever man could
Still search on, with small regard
For the wreckage he had
Left behind.
James Zaferopolos lives in Cleveland, Ohio. He was born in 1946 in Northern Greece, of a refugee Anatolian-Greek family. His father died when he was one. His mother and he came to America in 1955. They settled in Cleveland, OH, where he attended the Cleveland public schools, earned a BA in English from Baldwin Wallace College, and an MA in History from Cleveland State University. His wife, Eileen, has taught elementary school for forty seven years. They have five children, and fifteen grandchildren. He worked briefly as a reporter for the Painesville Telegraph, a small town paper in Ohio’s Lake County; a sales representative for Jonson & Johnson; and--for thirty years--a professor of History and administrator at a small Cleveland college, when health issues forced a somewhat unexpected early retirement. He has been writing poetry since his boyhood in Greece, but has only recently made an effort to publish. At 75, he tells himself, “it’s either now, or never”.