Louis MacNeice (1907-1963)

Peter McDonald printed this as as the last poem in his edition of MacNeice’s ‘Collected poems’. It has an attractive combination of elegy, defeat and determination.

Thalassa is the Greek word for the sea. For a classicist like MacNeice, it’s overloaded with connotations. From Xenaphon and his ragged army, desperately trying to get home, to the image of ageing Ulysses, pushing out on one more journey.

This is taken from McDonald’s beautiful ‘Collected poems’ Faber and Faber, 2007