Homer’s Oddity
You’ll know the story, I suppose,
Of how Odysseus and his men,
Vanquishing their Trojan foes,
Hit problems getting home again;
With loyal Penelope beginning
Those formidable feats of spinning.
The way old Homer hypes the story
– Wily Odysseus in the running
For the epic heights of glory,
And unprecedented cunning –
Belies what all the facts suggest.
This hero was a fool, at best!
His saga is an endless list
Of stumbling blindly into scrapes;
Depending, as is blithely missed,
On gods or sheep for his escapes.
The gods, of course, can share the glory,
But sheep – well, that’s another story!
And yet, could anyone deny
Odysseus narrowly survived
That Cyclops of the baleful eye,
Because resourceful sheep contrived
To give this stupid Greek a ride,
Clinging to their underside?
Take Jason with his Golden Fleece.
It shows, too, the same old deep
Unwritten truth of Ancient Greece –
Scratch the Man, and there’s the Sheep!
Though men, in that as every age,
Have hogged the centre of the stage.
So, what a difference there would be
In how the chronicles might show it,
If all these tales of history
Were written by some ovine poet!
And if we had the sheep-side view
On what blind Homer thought he knew.
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( from ‘Bertie and the Younger Set’ )