The eunuchs ran and brought him water in gold bowls,
soaked with rose-vinegar his pale and sweating brows,
then dragged him slowly up the stairs to the women’s rooms.
The castle-wrecker spread his hands and gripped the walls: 730
“Thank you, O Unseen Leader! You have brimmed my eyes!
They’re sated now this holy night, they want no more.”
He spoke, and in the cooling dawn the two beasts slunk away.
Yesterday and Tomorrow, like two rampant lions,
stood back to back in the sun’s flame-eyed disk and rolled 735
it gently down to earth to frisk and play with it.
The sun rolled on, and all earth’s creatures changed their dress,
their emerald shirts grew faded, tore, and fell away,
the gaunt trees shed their leaves, the heavy rains came down,
cranes carried the young birds and then flew off like carters 740
of fierce swift-footed time, and soared on toward the sun.
Wine in the kegs distilled, cruel winter choked the fields,
the waters sizzled where the Pleiades sank ashore
like burning coals that in the frothing water smothered,
and shepherds set out for their green and wintering fields. 745
The plowman, with his yoked ox, held a pomegranate,
and flung it on the male plow-blade to increase his seed;
shaggy invisible demons trudged before his furrows.
Other clodhoppers had already sown their seed
and asked the empty sky with dumb unease for rain; 750
troubles were many and life hung on the wind’s caprice.
From olive groves the olive-beaters marched and sang,
sorcerers shook their sistrums, dressed in sheepskin robes,
and all the workers’ mouths gaped wide with roaring song.
Far off in Ithaca, where the dread forefathers slept, 755
the pale belovèd wife of the new fledgling king
awoke with fright at daybreak in the women’s quarters.
She felt a sweet weight on her breast, a vertigo,
and when her husband lit the three-flamed lamp, distressed,
and soothed her with caresses and kind words, she wept, 760
felt close to fainting, and longed to eat a charcoal stick. 761
The young man laughed and recognized her pregnant wish,
knew that his son was now well-planted in her womb,
blew out the lamp, and hugged his holy bride with joy.
Meanwhile Odysseus, stalking about his golden cage, 765
twisted the palace round and round with unseen threads,
spied out and wrote down all in his mind’s iron plates.
The daintily fed court dames beneath their canopies
drank warm concoctions of sage, mint, and dittany,
and gazed at black-eyed broadbeans to divine their fate. 770
Others stooped over bronze jugs filled with speechless water 771
wherein they cast red apples stippled with black cloves,
sang magic couplets that unveiled each other’s fate
while a plump guileless youngster plunged his tender hand
and slowly drew for each her apple of destiny. 775
Young slaves perched on the window sills like birds and stitched
with golden fingers the dark sky with all its stars;
they stitched a flowering field their mistresses would wear
in springtime as they strolled along the blossomed streams.
A court girl sat beneath a covered balcony 780
on a gold-broidered pillow, mattress of soft down,
sunk deep in thought, and with red dye and a sharp reed
stooped over a smooth plaque of ivory-leaf and etched,
brimful of rain and sorrow, a small and bitter song:
“My heart was caught in the thick rain’s entangling net, 785
the water lilies slept in pools, the crocus bloomed,
and earth, a pallid maid in love, crouched low and wept.
Dear God, my locks are stringy, my cosmetics blurred,
my fingers smart from wearing these thick golden rings,
the proud curves of my lips have fallen and lost their paint; 790
pallid and sad, I hang in rain like a plucked rose.
One day at dusk as a worker passed, and waters streamed
from his curled towering head, and his thighs gleamed with rain,
I winked at him most sweetly, shyly waved and smiled,
but he was awed by the rich necklace round my throat, 795
the golden crown I wear upon my heavy head,
and fell on the drenched ground and bowed with reverence.
The yard rejoiced, filled with his flesh, but my heart broke.
God, might I only lie with him on muddy earth!
My hair has fluttered loose, a sad complaint has swept me, 800
I bare my bosom to the winds and quake in rain
like a white rose whose petals fall and fade in wind.”
After she wrote her dark grief on the ivory plaqué,
she hung it by the window in the drizzling rain
and slowly her lament began to melt, to flow, 805
until it reddened her white harem wall like dripping blood.
And thus the palace roses paled and shed their petals
while the bold archer roamed the slavehands’ sunless vaults
and Phida dashed before him like a panting hound.
The weaver’s mind spun round, and in his wattled net 810
the cobwebbed palace like a golden scarab gleamed.
The dexterous man put on a pleasant face to fool
the king, and in the workshop of an old wood-carver
learned how to chisel demons out of fragrant wood
and joyed to see how the gods sprang to his fingertips, 815
how hands, legs, heads ascended to his mind’s dictation.
The Cretan master craftsman bent to instruct his skilled
apprentice how to blow his soul in the lifeless wood:
“In every mountain stone, in every wood’s gnarled log,
the huddled spirits smother and cry to skillful hands. 820
The one who cries is not God, demon, or the wind’s sound,
for it’s your own enslaved soul that cries out for freedom!
One night while sleeping in my workshop all alone
I heard a marble block cry out in the still night;
it was my own enslaved soul crying, choked in stone. 825
At once I leapt from sleep, seized all my sharpest tools.
and in the lamp’s dim light began to hew the block
and crash through the thick prison walls to free my soul,
till finally at dawn the godly head emerged,
cool and rejoiced, and deeply breathed the crystal air. 830
Slowly I freed its breast and shoulders, its lean lops,
and as it rose from stone to light, my own jailed head,
my shoulders, chest, and loins were also slowly freed;
and when my soul had from my hands wholly emerged
it raised its eyes to the sky and soared like a giddy bird!” 835
The Cretan laughed and seized Odysseus by his arms:
“I speak of birds and freedom, for slavery eats my heart!
For years I’ve fought and beaten my cage’s golden bars;
I watch the sky, I watch huge wings pass high above me,
and in my hands I tightly grip my heart and cry: 840
‘Don’t hurry, child; I’m fitting you with secret wings!’
When we stop work, as night-birds brood and lamps are lit,
we sit on earth and then I soothe her with old myths:
‘Dear heart, the North Wind on his mountain tower of ice
boasted with stormy lips one day he scorned even Death. 845
And South Wind
slowly came and blew, then blew again,
till the dread tower melted away, and nothing stayed
but North Wind’s crystal tears that flooded all the fields.
But don’t think, heart, that the South Wind is God or Death:
he’s but man’s mind that slowly melts down towns and towers.’ ” 850
The apprentice watched the old man, fondled his skilled hands,
and longed to stoop and kiss those bulging shoulder blades
where curly though unseen wings sprouted, drenched in blood;
O might he have such eagle root and high descent!
In the gnarled master’s glance whole flocks of free birds flashed 855
with wide wings, and men flew and earth plunged headlong down
as withers away and falls the cricket’s muddy husk.
The Cretan followed with his eyes a snow-white dove
that spread its wings above the rain-soaked palace court,
flapped them with rapid strokes, balanced and swooped with speed, 860
then slid on the wet tiles and proudly closed its wings.
His ancient body tingled and his hands swayed gently
as though the earth beneath his feet had turned to air.
And when the holy bird amid the columns vanished,
the old man turned his glowing face, washed with cool wings: 865
“Freedom, my son, is two wings that man’s hands have shaped!”
He spoke, then bent above a cedar block with care
and chiseled a sharp olive leaf with its dark fruit.
Within the murky hopeless rain of silent dusk,
that night when the bold archer turned to the damp vaults, 870
and God growled like a bull in sunless, deep foundations,
his seven souls replied with soft and secret lowing sounds.
As earth’s wheel slowly turned, the days grew warm, time passed,
swallows flew by like arrows in a crisscross stream
and held thin many-colored threads to weave the weft 875
of water, sun, and lukewarm air, and with earth’s warp
adorn the spring with dainty flowers and warm eggs.
The hornbeam sprouted and the ash gave shade to shepherds’ haunts,
young grapevines budded with crab’s eyes, maids yearned for love,
and lonely slave-girls in their cellars softly sobbed, 880
for their unkissed throats swelled and pulsed with secret pain.
Orpheus crouched by the old king and played his flute
to drug that opiate brain and slacken that limp soul
till the poor monarch’s breath poured from the tiny flute.
One day when South Wind blew and swelled the trees, the king 885
stepped on the terrace and wept to feel earth’s pungent smells
unstring his spine until it crumpled, bone by bone.
“I’ve never known before such a sweet fragrant spring
of birdsong, secret cries and smells—I’m filled with fear!
This is the last time I shall taste the world in flower.” 890
Thus did the old king mumble in his room, and sigh.
As a girl gathered flowers and plucked a tall rose-bush
to match and send a full bouquet to her betrothed,
she spied the poor old king, and mocked him silently:
“The old thing rots away, he won’t last out the spring.” 895
In the closed gardens, almond trees were first to bloom,
motionless, hazed with fragrance in the whitening noon;
it was that scandalous month when maidens ran like does,
for they were chased by that invisible sweet lover
of spring with his moist quivering nostrils and curved horns. 900
Insects, too, donned their armor and foraged amid the grass,
lizards like courtly ladies dragged their slender trains
and with their sweet eyes softly glowed on scorching stones.
Within the crooked palace shy new-breasted maids
combed and uncombed the weight of their unbearable hair; 905
and on a low stool thickly rimmed with precious ivory,
Helen, the light-downed spoil of passion, sat enthroned.
The blood within her godly breasts had turned to milk,
a sweet weight overbrimmed her bosom and pale thighs
so that she leant to share it with an almond tree 910
that like a woman ready to beget her child
smiled in the light and also leant on Helen’s shoulder.
For a long time both mothers rested, overjoyed
to feel their secret fruit maturing in warm sun.
“When my first birth-pangs come, O my white almond tree, 915
dear twin, I’ll come to clasp you tight and bear my son
and twine one of your flowering sprays about my hair.”
Thus Helen thought, and smiled, then stooped and once again
took up her golden cloth and with slow-moving fingers
began to stitch with flowers her new son’s swaddling clothes. 920
She stooped, but her mind traveled on, her thoughts ran on
warbling like gurgling water through her pallid brow.
She bounces her new baby, plays, crawls like a bear,
he grows up with his father’s blond and thorny beard:
“Mother, the steeds are snorting, Mother, I must leave soon!” 925
She wishes him good journey, then turns to hide her tears.
A white bloom from the almond tree dropped on her hair
and Helen shuddered, smiled, took up her needle again,
and once more stitched spring flowers on her baby’s bonnet.
A slave with gray hair, once a prince’s daughter, felt 930
her mistress’s great sweetness, her nostalgic pain,
and fell before her lady’s feet with throbbing heart
as her voice shook with flute-sounds in the sunny-garden:
“Ah, mistress, when I see the dove fly, my heart burns,
and I feel curbed within my clothes, hedged in my house, 935
and raise my arms but find, alas, they are not wings!
In spring when the earth thaws and trees augment with leaves,
and caterpillars poke from soil and yearn for sun,
and, yearning, suddenly sprout prismatic wings, and fly—
ah, mistress, if man’s shoulders also could sprout wings!” 940
As the slave sang like a caged bird, in Helen’s heart
her old life rose like a most faint and faded dream.
She could recall her husband dimly, radiant Paris,
and those brave youths who died at Troy for her sweet sake;
but neither joy, nor even sorrow, touched her heart, 945
for now she felt her baby ripening in the fruitful sun.
Night fell, sheep were penned up and cows were brought to stall,
the sweating steeds returned and whinnied in their stables,
stars hung like threatening swords above the heads of men,
and an old peasant spread his hands to the archer, filled 950
with gifts of the soft-skinned first-fruited almond tree,
and he ate of the slim fruit rejoiced, and felt the freshness
of the green] fuzzy almonds deep to his calloused heels.
Thus holding the green fruit he talked to slaves and workers:
“Perk up your ears my brothers, I bring you awesome news! 955
As I passed through the courts one day, I bent and wondered
how all slaves might sprout wings and poverty grow rich.
I heard a deep sigh suddenly, and a column swayed:
raising my eyes, I saw God stand by the cellar door
proudly erect, his slim waist strapped with a sharp ax, 960
and his beard streamed like fire and swept the cedar columns.
Just as a hunter calls his hounds, he whistled twice,
&n
bsp; and my hair rose on end and flashed flame at the root;
he beat upon my ears as fists beat on a drum:
Oho! I’ve waited day and night, my hearts a hide, 965
the time has come, the ships draw near, let the pig bleed!’
He spoke; I heard a clattering as of speeding steeds,
of snorting in the courtyards while fierce fires roared.
My brothers, look! these eyes still bum that saw him there!”
But a brusque worker mocked and beat his chest: “Our god 970
is woman, wine and food! There is no other god!”
The slavehands yelled, and workers snorted in their vaults,
their thick lips slavered with desire, their minds were smeared
with old wines, heaps of food, and wild resounding beds.
The lone man watched that midwife, mad Necessity, 975
and bit his bitter lips in secret brooding thought:
“These impious bodies have set out to free their god,
and like black beetles filled with phallus, belly, ass,
roll their foul spheres, the soul, and try to mount my peaks!”
A sudden thought swooped like a hawk on head and heart: 980
“They’ll reach the peak, they’ll eat, they’ll drink with heavy minds,
their dull hearts will be twined with fat, their seed will choke,
and then, my God, another Archer will spring on earth!
Our stock is strong! Don’t be distressed, God, we shall free you!
‘How long will this game last?’ you ask. To the world’s end!” 985
The archer thus consoled his nail-sharp clawing mind,
gazed on the slaves more tenderly, and placed his hands
on their strong backs and solid thighs, then laughed and thought:
“God has dismounted from their masters’ breathless husks
and rides astride the firm rumps of the workers now. 990
‘Straight on!’ he cries, and goads them to climb further still.”
They talked and plotted closely at the castle’s roots,
the archer thought one thing, the slaves another, but both
merged in this holy hour that pressed on toward destruction.
“Victory is our first duty, brothers!” the archer cried. 995
“God beckons, and the time has come to fire the castle.
Tonight we’ll hand out iron weapons among our friends,
and all that mind has matched, our deeds will crown with victory!”
Meanwhile the king strolled slowly in the misty dawns
to watch the sun rise from his palace terraces 1000
and to breathe free from his long-shadowed stifling nightmares.
The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel Page 39
