English Literature & Theology

Ulysses by the Merlion by Edwin Thumboo   I have sailed many waters, Skirted islands of fire, Contended with Circe Who loved the squeal of pigs;   Passed Scylla and Charybdis To seven years with Calypso, Heaved in battle against the gods.   Beneath it all I kept faith with Ithaca, travelled, Travelled and travelled, Suffering much, enjoying a little; Met strange people singing New myths; made myths myself.   But this lion of the sea Salt-maned, scaly, wondrous of tail, Touched with power, insistent On this brief promontory ... Puzzles. Nothing, nothing in my days Foreshadowed this Half-beast, half-fish, This powerful creature of land and sea.                                              Peoples settled here, Brought to this island The bounty of these seas, Built towers topless as Ilium's.           ...

"Sea Grapes" by  Derek Walcott                                                                                     That sail which leans on light, tired of islands, a schooner beating up the Caribbean for home, could be Odysseus, home-bound on the Aegean; that father and husband's longing, under gnarled sour grapes, is like the adulterer hearing Nausicaa's name in every gull's outcry. This brings nobody peace. The ancient war between obsession and responsibility will never finish and has been the same for the sea-wanderer or the one on shore now wriggling on his sandals to walk home, since Troy sighed its last flame, and the blind giant's boulder heaved the trough from whose groundswell the great hexameters come to the conclusions of exhausted surf. The classics can console. ...