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presence, by phosphorescent torchlight, a presence that turns to a weeping, for “when night falls... she (I) lies/upon her (my) bed.../besieged by tears so stubborn and so sharp/that, even as she (I) mourns, tear her (me) apart,”26 a presence that thrusts her from “here” (Odysseus’ oikos by night) to “there”27 (suitor’s oikos by day) whenever she turns the woof in the loom’s warp as she weaves two destinies, wife of beloved Odysseus, and Queen of Ithaca, or of marauding suitor; just as Helen weaves two futures: wife of Paris or wife of Menelaus. Hence, Queen Penelope confronts her un- weaving as Heidegger’s ‘Aufriss’: she rips it apart to reveal an experience, a clearing, a freeing,28 a release towards being, towards phusis, as natural as Dylan’s ‘green fuse that drives the flower’29 and as primal as Wordsworth’s ‘hour of splendour in the grass, and of glory in the flower,’30 release felt in the solitude of being, away from irreverent suitors, for Penelope rarely shows herself,31 and when she does, she veils herself. Spontaneity of being Odysseus, too, feels when he prunes, and undoes the olive tree’s “long leaved limbs” to give form to their blissful connubial bedpost,32 never
26 Ody., 19. 503-530. 396.
27 “so does my soul shift, thrust, now here, now there,/not knowing whether I should stay beside/my son and keep all things intact.” Ody., 19. 503-530. 396.
28 Heidegger. On the Way to Language. New York: Harper and Row, 1971.
29 Thomas, Dylan. Quite Early One Morning. “The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower.” New York: New Directions Book, 1954.
30 Heath, William. Major British Poets of the Romantic Period. New York: McMillan Publishing Co., 1973. Wordsworth. Ode: Intimations of Immortality. Line 179. 259.
31 “And my mother stays/far from the suitors, at her loom upstairs:/you would not even see her – it is rare/for her to show herself.” Ody., 15.514-541.
32 Ody., 23.179-207.
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