The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel
Page 73
and spread like ancient wine along his thirsty veins.
He carried in his bowels, and led like a black ram, 485
all his far-distant native land, vineyards and fields,
and all his dead with their white bones and hollow eyes.
A sweet pain webbed his tranquil mind, and his heart gaped,
filled with all the unborn, the alive, the entirely dead.
In the gold lightning flash of thought his brain struck sparks, 490
the deep dark walls came tumbling down, death merged with life,
and as he leant against a rock the lone man strove
to place his sudden vision in a clear cold light:
“The black seas lie unharvested, the mountains sweat,
my body is a ship weighed down with myriad souls, 495
and I, the captain, sail toward death with rapturous joy.
Astern, the dead push like north winds till the planks creak,
abaft, my grandsons gambol like white gulls on waves,
and at the prow my tribe’s own spirit flaps its wings.
I stoop and gaze at my own entrails, my deep hold: 500
hoarse voices, starving beasts, and fiercely rowing souls,
and pile on pile of wine kegs, food casks, and dark slaves!
Push on, O parents and grandsons both, I hold the tiller,
pull at the oars, a north wind blows, the port’s in sight!”
Thus did the man of many souls talk to himself 505
as he bent low and joyed to see how his dark roots
thrust through the muddy earth, long-lived and many-branched.
“I’m free at last of my own shade, of my own flesh!
O three-peaked deathless tree of my great race, thrice welcome!”
He raised his lashes, and his lighthouse mind spied all 510
the vast world with the eyes of all his race,
and as he brooded deeply on the plunging gorge,
an eagle from the crags loomed in the heart of light
and whirled in widening rings to warm its frozen wings.
But as the unsated heart rejoiced in the dawn’s calm 515
he suddenly felt on the rose-wounded peak a deep
and smothered sigh tear through the air from the earth’s pit.
Turning, he saw Prometheus nailed to a huge rock,
and from his writhing lips the archer’s own blood streamed.
Black iron pincers nailed him to the boulder’s root 520
and his immense brows gleamed like tall snow-covered peaks.
“Father!” His eagle-mind swooped on the giant’s breast.
“Who calls? I hear the sea’s roar and a harsh wind blowing.”
“Father of flame and brain, I grasp you by the knees;
I’m but the smallest of your small waves, I kiss your feet.” 525
Then the torch-bearing dragon’s voice was heard in joy:
“Deep in the depths of blackest night I dreamt of suns,
I dreamt the boulders to my right and left were wings
and that I swooped in the dawn’s light, a great cross-eagle.
Who are you, Son, for when you called me, my dream vanished?” 530
“I am that much-resourceful mind, cunning Odysseus.
Now, Father, that I’ve lightly touched your holy feet,
my own desires have vanished like once childish cares,
my voyages seem of little worth, my loot, my life!”
The mountains shook like wings and the slopes filled with mist: 535
“A thousand welcomes, brave mind of god-battling man!”
But the great grandson raised his hands to his forefather
as trembling palms are stretched to feel a warming fire:
“I bow and hail with awe the hard flint of the mind.
You are that soul who raised my low brow toward the sun 540
and planted earth firm at my feet like my own home.
At my ten fingertips you lit flame’s piercing eye
till men and beasts all pressed about me to pay homage;
I bow and worship your great grace, old lord of hope.
You tamed the dewlapped bull and bent it to the yoke, 545
you furrowed the dark earth and taught me how to plant
all seed like flesh and wait with patience the gold grain;
even that muddy worm, the wingless heavy heart,
you filled with wings and hope and flung it toward the sun.
I sailed with your great blessing, but as boundaries spread, 550
I still held fate’s unrighteous yoke like wings aloft
nor trembled at the sky nor feared its thunderbolts,
for as I walked the earth, Grandfather, you held my hand!”
But the great dragon’s frown eclipsed the blazing sun:
“I’ve not illumined or saved the world! My life went lost! 555
God’s lightning flash turned into brain, and the brain rose;
I, too, rushed up like God, seized clay, made men,
licked them with flame, thrust in their brains a spark of light,
placed knives within their fists and hopes within their hearts
then spread my deep arms wide and loosed them on the earth: 560
‘Children of earth and fire, beloved clay, push on!’
But all my troops forsook me and my sons betrayed me,
now see to what I’ve come, O Grandson, where spite cast me:
I’m nailed to memory’s sleepless rock and shout in pain.
Alas, I could not finish life’s most glorious task!” 565
The fierce man’s choking voice fell at the giant’s feet:
“Grandfather, entrust the final task to my strong shoulders.”
But that unbridled wild heart had not heard, and muttered:
“I’ve not illumined or saved the world! My life went lost!
I did not kill that lawless God nor make my peace 570
with him so that man’s suffering heart might find repose;
that’s why I hang mid-air between the earth and sky.”
The seven-souled man touched his lord’s lit fingertips:
“I feel your suffering and I bear your burdens, too.
I know it’s right to thrust impossible tasks aside: 575
War!’ cries the mind, ‘but don’t cross man’s ordained frontiers!’
Yet a hoarse cry springs from the center of my heart
and in my earthen breast stands straight and fights with Death!”
But the refulgent rebel bitterly shook his head:
“Beyond all flame and light, beyond even Death, my son, 580
the final labor, the last ax, still gleams with blood.” 581
Then all the summit smoked as the great body groaned
and, like a strong oak split by lightning, burned and glowed
till the man-slayer reached and grasped the lord of light:
“Grandfather, speak the final word, give me your blessing!” 585
But the rough mountaintop stood bare, only its peak
resounded still with a great nailed and heavy sigh.
As the long-suffering man strove to pierce through the light
a fierce spasmodic voice clove through the torn air, “Help me!”
“Who called?” the tortured man cried out, stretched on his rock, 590
but no soul answered, though he felt his giddy breast
quivering like the rough mountaintop and crying, “Help me!”
The heart of man had turned to a fierce cry that tore the air.
The archer leapt in silence, his mind glowed and spun,
he jumped from crag to crag, the stones rolled at his feet 595
as though a dense battalion tramped the mountain slopes.
“I need companions! Men, come now from land or sea!”
He yelled in the rough-breasted mountain, the rude clefts,
and his wild cry of freedom leapt and struck the towns,
struck every
head, then swiftly passed and howled through wastes. 600
His savage chest was locked and barred, and the sun struck,
cajoling it with patience for a long time to open;
the sown seeds of laborious man woke in the soil,
all idle hands branched out to work, eyes fluttered wide,
and babes cried in their cradles for their mothers’ milk. 605
Massed troops of workers armed themselves, each with its tools,
and set out for the holy war to earn their bread;
girls every dawn with cooling water wet their eyes
to wipe away the sweet and shameful flush of dreams.
All mankind’s races woke then in the sufferer’s breast; 610
all sons of mother earth, the sallow, blond and black,
laughed, sighed, and hugged the lone man’s savage chest
and he stooped down and blessed in him that deathless pair,
woman and man, who strove to plant their god on earth.
“O dark-lashed wingless love for earth, with both your wild 615
and muddy feet sunk deep within the first spring rains,
you fill my heart and make my breast a bridegroom’s suite.
My throat chokes, my heart throbs—if only I could speak!
Dear God, if only I could clasp and cry ‘My brothers!’
Each soul’s a fading will-o’-the-wisp, one syllable 620
drowned in the sea’s immense and ever-moving song;
if only we could free our heads from the wide waves
to watch and sail upon the entire sacred song
so long as our hearts hold in light and the sweet air,
that we might all merge tightly, word with word, and find 625
the secret meaning of the voyage, and the bright port!
Rise, archer, stand erect on your head’s tallest crown
to see and to rejoice in man’s first murky dawns!”
The ancient warrior spoke with fervor and stretched the world
till boundaries moved and swayed, till crowded herds of man 630
rose in the archer’s entrails as his mute forebears,
stepped back with fear to admit the races of all men.
How small his native land then seemed, how thin the soil
that rose from the small brains and brawn of his weak tribe!
Races of men seethed in his bowels, battalions moved, 635
the soul spread everywhere, plunged deep, struck deeper roots:
“It’s not I or my forebears who set out within me,
for in my bowels I feel white, yellow, and black hands
that sway above the abyss and cry to me for help.”
Then the archer struck his chest and cried with piercing joy: 640
“I’ve found the steadfast rock on which to build my deathless castle!”
The hot sun fell behind the ridges, the stones cooled,
and twilight stretched upon the fields, a wounded fawn
with large black eyes on which the smothering night had fallen.
The birds fell silent, night came down like a black wing 645
and the archer suddenly longed to hear a gentle voice;
he stretched and pressed his ear to earth, his brains refreshed,
and from the soil a weak complaining sound arose:
“My son, it’s a hard task to shoot that bow, your mind,
far further than the boundaries of the human race 650
and reach that highest peak of all, goodness and grace!”
The captain then of the wind-battered heart replied:
“Aye, old crone mother, you forget how tight I claw
life’s sorrows and injustice, nor will I let them go!
Ah, granite memory, O beloved uncrumbling stone, 655
huge deeply graven block on my mind’s lintel top,
I raise my eyes and see that fate is shores and seas,
that the twelve fat and shameless crows who rule the sky,
the haughty youths within my house, the arrogant lords,
wanted not love or peace, only the bloodstained ax!” 660
Once more the far wan words of Mother Earth were heard:
“The time draws near, my son, to pass beyond all need.
Now make your peace with beasts and trees, pity all men,
they’re all my children, pummeled from my earthen guts;
son who last sucked my breast, my hopes all hang on you! 665
Joy inexpressible, great pain, great longing, dreams,
tear at my heart and daze my mind—it’s you, my son,
must tell me all I’ve longed for, do what I’d want to do!”
Pressing his ear to earth, the archer listened still
to the far-distant grieving voice of hid desire, 670
then turned and scolded that fierce tigress, his cruel heart:
“Esteem mankind who from the beast disjoined and fled,
don’t hone your claws, you witch, but look on him with love:
he walks earth freely without claws, or horns, or tusks,
unarmored, naked as the frog, but in his head 675
the lightning sits enthroned and spies on all the world.
I shout to God who nailed my grandfather to a rock
and raise my fists against him—let him fling his bolts:
‘Slayer, you hurled man down to hunger and disease,
placed but a pallid woman at his side, no fire, 680
but when that human pair tilled and manured your mind
like oxen yoked and stooped to plow the barren earth,
whether you willed or not, in your black pits they strove
to thrust the seed of freedom like huge dragon teeth.
The time has come, brave heart, to raise our banner too!’” 685
Then he turned back and stretched before his cavern’s mouth;
his beard burned all night long as with an astral fire,
and like the lion’s cubs who whet their nails on rocks,
dreams came and clawed his stony temples ruthlessly.
It was not only his own voice that tore his heart, 690
it was not only his own greedy tough-skinned race,
nor only human cries that seethed within his guts,
for grunts, growls, bird song, caterwauling, chirps and yowls
leapt from his loins like fistfuls of cascading spray
and earth poured through his blood with all her horns and wings. 695
His veins then moved like sluggish snakes, like monstrous worms,
and the world’s muddy mother-roots rose up toward light.
He felt himself at length freed from the snare of race,
he felt his roots plunge deeper than man’s puny brood
and guessed he now drew close to his most ancient forebear 700
who like a water-bison roared in his bowels and rose
whenever heavy rage or dreams or a woman’s kiss
still ravaged his heart’s roots and stormed amid its ruins.
The archer quaffed the heavy wine of the moon’s light,
he heard the insects rasp with sweet erotic cries, 705
he heard night rustling through cascades and swaying boughs,
he heard his angry leopard cub growl near his cave
and gaze far down the mountains, sniff the wild wastelands,
and as she smelled male sweat, deep musk, and hidden breaths,
she flashed her master slanting glares of yellow wrath. 710
But the heart-reader smiled, he guessed her pain, recalled
his own fresh youth when he had glared at his own father
on hearing a girl’s cool and distant laughter ring.
A fat and female scorpion squirmed through leaves and stones,
for she had drained the empty skull of her male mate, 715
and now she tossed and rolled and licked it savagely
then flung it suddenly down a cliff and quickly dashed
with her wide belly full of eggs, and dug in soil.
The male had sown his seed, then died, his duty done,
and the she-scorpion took his dread hopes in her thighs 720
and thrust in soil with joy so that her sons one day
might move and eat her guts, then leap in the bright sun
that she, too, might descend to Hades tranquilly.
“Ah, who thrusts us to die with such great sweetness, God?”
the archer sighed, rejoiced, and stretched on a huge rock, 725
and felt birds, male and female scorpions, insects, beasts,
throughout all earth, in the dense trees, in the deep air.
He cast his few poor rags aside and longed to touch
the earth through all his length, like a nude snake, and merge
with those huge muddy dugs which pour man’s milky sleep. 730
Thus did the two great bodies sleep, nude, merged in one,
and in a long sweet dream it seemed to him night smiled
as though she also dreamt of light, a golden egg
that in her brooding darkness hatched the sun to spring
like a great cock with crimson crest and beat its wings 735
while the serene earth cackled like a dappled hen.
And as the sighing archer smiled with night’s sweet dream,
it seemed that daybreak burst, that the sun stood before him
and that he rose, then sat and gazed about him calmly
as though he felt deep breathing, myriad souls and eyes. 740
Behold, in the first glimmering streaks of blond-haired day
he saw that all the fabled cave walls had gone blank
as though black hunters and red beasts had all been freed
from their enchanted snares and moved in the light now.
A swirling and erotic dance, nude maids and men 745
who for a thousand years had whirled entrapped in paints,
slid freed now from the walls till only the hung flute
of the young shepherd lad who led the dance still stayed.
Thick shades and airy phantoms rustled everywhere
and wound the great soul-snatcher like the moon’s corona. 750
“These are my true forebears,” he murmured. “Bow with homage!”
But as he turned his firm head toward the shadowy throng
he felt a thousand fragile heads swirl round
and round as though two magic mirrors glittered in the cave,
and a warm beaded sweat dripped from each pallid brow. 755
“Shades choke me, wings spring from my shoulders right and left,”
the lone man cried, and shook his hairy arms with force
till all the cave with tear-stained eyes and bodies brimmed.