The Cure at Troy

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by Seamus Heaney


  Why are you arguing a case for them?

  Forget them, and remember what you said

  You’d do for me. You made a promise

  To take me with you when you were going home

  To Scyros. And that’s what you must do.

  Otherwise, you’ll be tainted with their guilt

  Just by association.

  Neoptolemus

  I can see that.

  But even so, the signs are that the gods

  Want you to go to Troy, and me with you.

  Philoctetes

  How can you bear to take their side like that?

  Neoptolemus

  It’s not their side.

  It’s what our fates involve.

  Philoctetes

  This is real turncoat talk. Have you no shame?

  Neoptolemus

  What’s the shame in working for a good thing?

  Philoctetes

  But good for who? Me or my enemies?

  Neoptolemus

  Am I your friend or not?

  Philoctetes

  I thought you were.

  Neoptolemus

  Stop just licking your wounds. Start seeing things.

  Philoctetes

  There’s danger in all this somewhere. I can sense it.

  Neoptolemus

  The danger is you’ll break if you don’t bend,

  So I give up. From now on, you can live

  With every consequence of your decision.

  Philoctetes

  Whatever’s been laid out, I’m ready for it.

  But there’s consequence to your own endeavours:

  You gave your word – you pledged with your hand

  And promised you’d take me home.

  So do that now.

  Restore your good name. Bury the name of Troy.

  Neoptolemus

  I gave my word.

  So. Fair is fair.

  We go.

  Philoctetes

  We go?

  Neoptolemus

  Gather yourself. Come on.

  Philoctetes

  I can’t believe it.

  Neoptolemus

  The Greeks.

  No, wait.

  The Greeks’ll be after us.

  Philoctetes

  Forget them. You’ll be safe.

  Neoptolemus

  But the country won’t be.

  Philoctetes

  I’ll be in your country.

  Neoptolemus

  And what good’s that?

  Philoctetes

  Hercules’s bow!

  Neoptolemus

  The bow. We have it still.

  Philoctetes

  Hercules’s bow is miraculous

  And will save us every time.

  Neoptolemus

  Then so be it.

  This time your farewell is farewell for good.

  Philoctetes repeats some part of his original rite of departure. Perhaps he raises both arms, perhaps prostrates himself. A silence then, music perhaps also. Then an eerie, soundless (at first) flash and flame; mountain-rumble far off; an air of danger, settling into a kind of threatened, pre-thunder stillness. Darker stage, a kind of purpled twilight. Chorus in spotlight, positioned as at end of prologue.

  Chorus

  Human beings suffer,

  They torture one another,

  They get hurt and get hard.

  No poem or play or song

  Can fully right a wrong

  Inflicted and endured.

  The innocent in gaols

  Beat on their bars together.

  A hunger-striker’s father

  Stands in the graveyard dumb.

  The police widow in veils

  Faints at the funeral home.

  History says, Don’t hope

  On this side of the grave.

  But then, once in a lifetime

  The longed-for tidal wave

  Of justice can rise up,

  And hope and history rhyme.

  So hope for a great sea-change

  On the far side of revenge.

  Believe that a further shore

  Is reachable from here.

  Believe in miracles

  And cures and healing wells.

  Call miracle self-healing:

  The utter, self-revealing

  Double-take of feeling.

  If there’s fire on the mountain

  Or lightning and storm

  And a god speaks from the sky

  That means someone is hearing

  The outcry and the birth-cry

  Of new life at its term.

  The full thunderclap and eruption-effects occur. Then a lingering, wavering aftermath of half-light. Brilliant spots find Philoctetes and Chorus.

  Philoctetes (crying out)

  Hercules:

  I saw him in the fire.

  Hercules

  was shining in the air.

  I heard the voice of Hercules in my head.

  Chorus (ritually clamant, as Hercules)

  I have opened the closed road

  Between the living and the dead

  To make the right road clear to you.

  I am the voice of Hercules now.

  Here on earth my labours were

  The stepping-stones to upper air:

  Lives that suffer and come right

  Are backlit by immortal light.

  Go, Philoctetes, with this boy,

  Go and be cured and capture Troy.

  Asclepius will make you whole,

  Relieve your body and your soul.

  Go, with your bow. Conclude the sore

  And cruel stalemate of our war.

  Win by fair combat. But know to shun

  Reprisal killings when that’s done.

  Then take just spoils and sail at last

  Out of the bad dream of your past.

  Make sacrifice. Burn spoils to me.

  Shoot arrows in my memory.

  And, Neoptolemus, you must be

  His twin in arms and archery.

  Marauding lions on that shore,

  Troy’s nemesis and last nightmare.

  But when the city’s being sacked

  Preserve the shrines. Show gods respect.

  Reverence for the gods survives

  Our individual mortal lives.

  Philoctetes

  Something told me this was going to happen.

  Something told me the channels were going to open.

  It’s as if a thing I knew and had forgotten

  Came back completely clear.

  All that you say

  Is like a dream to me and I obey.

  Neoptolemus

  And so will I.

  Chorus

  Then go, immediately.

  The winds are blowing and the tides are high.

  Philoctetes (in a sort of daze, on all fours perhaps, or clasping an upright support: knocked out, flattened)

  But I can’t believe I’m going. My head’s light at the thought of a different ground and a different sky. I’ll never get over Lemnos; this island’s going to be the keel under me and the ballast inside me. I’m like a fossil that’s being carried away, I’m nothing but cave stones and damp walls and an old mush of dead leaves. The sound of waves in draughty passages. A cliff that’s wet with spray on a winter’s morning. I feel like the sixth sense of the world. I feel I’m a part of what was always meant to happen, and is happening now at last. Come on, my friends.

  Chorus

  Now it’s high watermark

  And floodtide in the heart

  And time to go.

  The sea-nymphs in the spray

  Will be the chorus now.

  What’s left to say?

  Suspect too much sweet talk

  But never close your mind.

  It was a fortunate wind

  That blew me here. I leave

  Half-ready to believe

  That a crippled trust might walk
<
br />   And the half-true rhyme is love.

  About the author

  Seamus Heaney was born in County Derry in Northern Ireland. Death of a Naturalist, his first collection of poems, appeared in 1966, and was followed by poetry, criticism and translations which established him as the leading poet of his generation. In 1995 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, and twice won the Whitbread Book of the Year, for The Spirit Level (1996) and Beowulf (1999). Stepping Stones, a book of interviews conducted by Dennis O’Driscoll, appeared in 2008; Human Chain, his last volume of poems, was awarded the 2010 Forward Prize for Best Collection. He died in 2013.

  By the same author

  poetry

  DEATH OF A NATURALIST

  DOOR INTO THE DARK

  WINTERING OUT

  NORTH

  FIELD WORK

  STATION ISLAND

  SWEENEY ASTRAY

  SWEENEY’S FLIGHT (with photographs by Rachel Giese)

  THE HAW LANTERN

  NEW SELECTED POEMS 1966–1987

  SEEING THINGS

  LAMENTS BY JAN KOCHANOWSKI (translated with Stanisław Barańczak)

  THE SPIRIT LEVEL

  OPENED GROUND: POEMS 1966–1996

  BEOWULF

  ELECTRIC LIGHT

  DISTRICT AND CIRCLE

  THE TESTAMENT OF CRESSEID & SEVEN FABLES

  HUMAN CHAIN

  NEW SELECTED POEMS 1988–2013

  AENEID: BOOK VI

  THE RATTLE BAG (edited with Ted Hughes)

  THE SCHOOL BAG (edited with Ted Hughes)

  prose

  PREOCCUPATIONS: SELECTED PROSE 1968–1978

  THE GOVERNMENT OF THE TONGUE

  THE REDRESS OF POETRY: OXFORD LECTURES

  FINDERS KEEPERS: SELECTED PROSE 1971–2001

  STEPPING STONES (with Dennis O’Driscoll)

  plays

  THE BURIAL AT THEBES

  Copyright

  Paperback edition first published in 1990

  by Faber & Faber Ltd

  Bloomsbury House

  74–77 Great Russell Street

  London WC1B 3DA

  Cased edition first published simultaneously by Field Day Theatre Company, Derry

  This ebook edition first published in 2018

  All rights reserved

  © The Estate of Seamus Heaney, 2018

  The right of Seamus Heaney to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  The quotation from W. H. Auden on p. vii is from The English Auden edited by Edward Mendelson, reprinted by permission of Faber & Faber Ltd.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978–0–571–34619–6

 

 

 


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