Sirens

A poem for America

Ulysses and the Sirens (1909), oil on canvas, by Herbert James Draper (1863–1920), Ferens Art Gallery, Kingston upon Hull, England.

Sirens

There’s a moment when the sirens 
grow loudest that we’re certain 

the ambulance, the fire engines 
are headed for our house, 

that they’re turning the corner 
for our sins, that the universe 

isn’t run on love or relativity, 
hasn’t anything to do with an infant’s

need to nurse, a mother’s willingness 
to oblige. There, in the evening 

sky, it’s a wonder the moon 
doesn’t collide with each and every 

one of us, for the sirens outside aren’t 
wooing us for romance but calamity. 

So we must, like the hero Odysseus,
stop our ears with beeswax and lash 

ourselves to the mast of whatever vessel 
it is that carries us. Or, like Orpheus,

drown out their singing with music 
of our own. Sadly, we are neither.

We are more like poor Butes,
who leapt overboard and had to be 

fetched from the sea, relying
on Aphrodite’s pity to save him

from the creatures—half-nightingale, 
half-vulture—that sing to us now.

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TFP IS A PROUD MEMBER OF THE IOWA WRITERS COLLABORATIVE

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