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Penelope
"...She had her great loom standing in the hall
and the fine warp of some vast fabric on it;
we were attending her, and she said to us:
'Young men, my suitors, now my lord is dead,
let me finish my weaving before I marry,
or else my thread will have been spun in vain.
It is a shroud I weave for Lord Laertes...'"
Homer - Odyssey, Book 2 - Fitzgerald Translation
My name is a symbol of steadfast faith
but don't you think I resented those knots
tied by my own clever fingers, that pattern
so cunning it wound up catching the weaver
in the warp of her own design?
I told the suitors (as you've heard in your story)
I was making a shroud for my husband's
old father, so they left me alone for a while.
(Yes, women are well occupied in the pious pursuits of death)
Day after day I stayed fixed at my loom,
caught ever more tightly in fibers
of my own expectation, seduced
by a thread that hid and repeated
like birdsong at twilight:
Will Odysseus ever finish his journey?
Or will he keep on, knowing I am reliable,
steady; the very model, pattern for wives
he will hand to the ages: Faithful Penelope.
(Here your story continues: the rude men
of Ithaka drink up my husband's wine and distress me)
But don't you think I knew my Odysseus?
Well did I know he counted, even from afar,
the rich gifts they were bringing. I was
a good wife, who gathered both honor and gold.
(I understand: it's hard for you to imagine. Stories
change over time; simplicity is bought at truth's expense)
I was knitted in knots of my own
clever fingers, caught like a spider
who is both prey and the web she brings forth.
(Spinners, weavers are female: their labors extrude from their insides)
What yarns was my husband spinning
on his ship, on Kalypso's isle?
You've read how he had himself tied
to the mast so as not to be snared by the Sirens.
(Though stories fray with time, his cleverness is legendary)
When I wept, it was for our son.
He couldn't leave home, bound as he felt
to protect me, a mother not widowed nor
truly abandoned; alone, tied to an absence.
He got angry with me: "Why do you let them?
Send the suitors away!" In secret I'd see him,
fondling their trinkets, admiring himself in a bright bronze mirror.
Like my shuttle, I flew back and forth: good mother
assuring her child that his father would come;
then again, a woman who knew she could
live alone yet still be a part of the web.
My pattern grew more elaborate,
I became enmeshed in its tale.
Telemakhos watched, asked like the others
when I would finish. While he slept
alongside the strangers, I was tempted
night after night – to weave to the end
of the story, tie the last knot, to submit, declare
I could wait no more for the end of the journey.
But inspite of myself (your story does no credit
to my bitter struggle)
my fingers pulled out the intricate pattern,
retraced their own path to wreak invisible damage.
Next day I sat there again in a web of my own devising,
nodding and knotting, gathering, waiting with honor
for rescue by him who would outshine all others.
Thus our fate hangs by threads.
I might so easily have unraveled
Everything—one night!
I wanted so much to go back to the beginning
become a single strand (seablue, skygreen)
a gift for a dove building her nest.
In the next world, Oh, Athena!
Let me have nothing to do with weaving!
Remember this now for your story:
A strange thing about patterns—
they catch you, subdue your will to the web
of your own expectation, entrap....
I've known forever that I could live
alone. I know I will never finish this weaving.
Odysseus returned
but he'll never be done
with his journey.
And I am still needed
to complete his story –
a captive faithful
thread.