Week #5—Sign Inventory

Penelope’s Despair

                        By Yannis Ritsos

It wasn’t that she didn’t recognize him in the light from the

        hearth: it wasn’t

the beggar’s rags, the disguise—no. The signs were clear:

the scar on his knee, the pluck, the cunning in his eye. Frightened,

her back against the wall, she searched for an excuse,

a little time, so she wouldn’t have to answer,

give herself away. Was it for him, then, that she’d used up twenty

        years,

twenty years of waiting and dreaming, for this miserable

blood-soaked, white-bearded man? She collapsed voiceless into a

       chair,

slowly studied the slaughtered suitors on the floor as though

       seeing

her own desires dead there. And she said “Welcome,”

hearing her voice sound foreign, distant. In the corner, her loom

covered the ceiling with a trellis of shadows, and all the birds

       she’d woven

with bright red thread in green foliage, now,

on this night of the return, suddenly turned ashen and black,

flying low on the flat sky of her final enduring.

Narrative in third-person voice

Twenty lines parallels “twenty years”

Repetition in “It wasn’t” and “twenty years.”

Five indentations, three with one word lines.

Eight lines of enjambment

Alliteration in “wall,” “wouldn’t” “Was” “waiting” and “white-bearded”; “slowly studied the slaughtered suitors on the floor as though / seeing / her own desires dead there.”; Also in “foliage” and “flying low on the flat sky of her final enduring.”

Assonance in “pluck” and “cunning”; “collapsed voiceless into a chair”; “ceiling with a trellis of shadows”;

Internal rhyme in “red thread”, “black” and “flat.”

No end rhymes

Metaphor of tapestry on loom for subject’s lifespan

Rhythm scheme in gerunds: “waiting and dreaming,” and verbs “seeing,” “hearing” and “flying” augmented by nouns: “cunning” and “ceiling”