When Odysseus Did Not Return

When the last sailboat turned into stardust,
And Penelope no longer spun in the night,
No one wept. Only the sea, ominously and quietly,
Preserved his name in the depths of the hearth.

The Sirens, weary of singing, went blind in the silence.
The Cyclopes in the cliffs have already erased their names.
And Odysseus himself, who once played with fate – vanished,
Not in Ithaca, not in battle – but in a single legend.

He left the bonfire where the Gods drank blood
And went to the place where there are neither names nor laws.
To a land where myth is not a memory, but a call,
And time itself stands on stone pillars.

There, they say, he walks without a shadow or a sword,
Having forgotten what return and glory are,
Only sometimes the wave whispers: “he has not yet slept.”
And the sea shudders, as if it remembers something.