IT'S DEJA JU ALL OVER AGAIN!

One of the pretentious young painters in Somerset Maugham's novel, Of Human Bondage, observes that no artist should live beyond forty because by then he's produced his best work and after that everything he does is merely repetition.
The poem below, Odyssey, bears many similarities to a couple of others that I've written and all three may have been influenced by a much-loved narrative poem from my childhood, The Listeners by Walter de la Mare. 
The other two poems with a similar theme are The Cottage and The House Of The Famous Poet, the latter included in my Stone Witness collection published by Blue Ormer a couple of years ago.
To have repeated myself not once but three times seems to suggest that I've been around far too long!

ODYSSEY

We left the car and travelled on
by foot: the track was rough and steep.
Above us, high, the Greek sun shone.
We paused to watch bright swallows sweep.
The temperature was rising fast.
We reached the little house at last.

But there was no one there, besides,
it looked abandoned: no goats came
to stare at us with strange pale eyes,
no cats crouched by the window-frame,
asleep, indifferent to us,
no dog rushed out to make a fuss.

So we turned round, reluctantly,
and made our way back to the car
that we had parked so carelessly.
The track behind lay like a scar

upon a half-remembered face

that time and weather might erase.