Seven cities contend to have harboured his cradle:
Smyrna, Chios, Kollophon,
Ithaké, Pylos, Argos,
Athénai.
Like a lamb he strolls
through marine pastures,
unseen, unburied,
unexcavated, casting no
biographical shadow.
Did he ever have trouble with the authorities?
Did he never get drunk? Was he never bugged,
not even when singing?
Did he never love fox terriers, cats,
or young boys?
How much better the Iliad would be
if Agamemnon could be proved to bear
his features or if Helen’s biology
reflected contemporary facts.
How much better the Odyssey would be
if he had two heads,
one leg,
or shared one woman
with his publisher.
Somehow he neglected all that
in his blindness.
And thus he towers
in literary history
as a cautionary example
of an author so unsuccessful
that maybe he didn’t exist at all.
—Miroslav Holub
