page 12

Odysseus of Ithaca
battling for
the beautiful Helena
defeated Ajax
through Athena's cow dunga
drifted to
the island Ogygia.
Calypso's cave
he traded for Nausicaa.
Spoke to her of
Lotofagia,
of Cyclops and Aeaea
Charibdis and Trinacria.
Home again with Penelope
after a philippica
all the suitors
got euthanasia.

"It's not Ódysseus but Odýsseus
and doesn't sound like 'yellow sun',
if that was your intention.
So there is something wrong with the meter.
The a's added to Helen, dung and philippic …
alright, but the damning speech was named
after Philip of Macedon who was born
much later than Homer."
More criticism from Ien: "those
suitors, didn't one or two escape?
The rest was arrowed down ... not?"

page 13

"When we left Rotterdam harbor ..."
"Yes Henk, that's the first line of
the song Ketelbinkie, the deck hand."
"And sing instead of Rotterdam, Ithaca."
"When we left Ithaca harbor, with the
'Edam' ... what was their ship named?"
To catch the Odyssey in one song, was
asking for trouble, grandpa thought.
"Moreover, the journey started in Ismaros.
What preceded is Iliad. And then that
'we', the only one returning was Odysseus."
"We'll see." Paul's motto. If necessary
we'll put Iliad and Odyssey in one song.
Ien added Paul's idea to the notebook.
"I'll have a look at it, later at home."


Odysseus

Our black ship with the red bow.

When we left Ithaca harbor
To fight the Trojans in the east
For beautiful Helena of Sparta
Being captured by Paris that beast
We had a guy, rather clever
Laertes' son with us on board
Who transformed Calchas' dreams
To wooden horse as final chord

After the victory over Trojans
Ajax the Lesser he outran
And so the crater and the ox won
That Odysseus was our man.

page 96

"To Dodewaard? But I'm not so much opposed
to nuclear energy. Sellafield ... but have a look
at Weurt. A village in between a waste incinerator
and a power plant using coal." "No, not because of
that, Henk, we go to Dodona, Delos and Lemnos.
That is: Dodewaard, Deelen and Lemmer."
"With the car?" Manon wanted to know.
"Yes, I can borrow my mother's Volvo."
"Did Greece then coincide with the Netherlands?
I mean the alleged Greece." "You mean Achaea,
Henk. No. For example, in France was Argos,
where they still speak Argot. What surprised
me the most though, was that Knossos, proved
to be Oslo." "Oh that's a pity, I had hoped
it was here. The carnival name for Nijmegen
... Knotsenburg." "And where would Egypt be?
Guess what?" "Belgium?" tried Carmenita.
"No, almost. The department of Seine-Maritime.
Dieppe is Thebes. I wanna go see the lot.
I'm planning even more journeys."



Carmenita thought of distant locations.
"Then the Odyssey probably was to South
America?" "Again nearly right. It's Central
America, namely Saba and Cuba." Henk
thought of locations in the neighborhood.
"Would it be possible that the moraine over
here, that stretches from the St. Jansberg all
the way to the Duivelsberg (Devil's Mountain),
also had been an area with lots of sacred
places? Across the German border in the
Reichswald is a hill called Himmelsleiter
(Stairway to Heaven) Those are places
we can go and see by bicycle."


St. Jansberg


Chestnut tree Duivelsberg


Reichswald