the host will come amid these snows and bid me welcome.” 515
Thus did he speak to his numbed mind and cast his eyes
fearlessly round to fight the holy beast with awe.
The sallow sun crawled in vast whiteness tinged with rose,
the azure-emerald moon still dripped with poisoned dew,
and the bird-hunter perked his ears and thought he heard 520
the crying of wild birds and swish of flapping wings.
His knees grew strong again, his blue lips wanly smiled:
“I hear wings fluttering now; Death has a thousand shapes,
and he may choose to come as a white monstrous swan
and lure me here on earth with his sweet ruby eyes. 525
Don’t fear, my soul! Let come what may, evil or good!”
He spoke, then clutched his bow and strode across the snows,
and as he turned a mountain’s rim, his heart grew calm,
for on a rock plateau a spouting geyser sprang,
boiling and roaring with thick steam and scalding water; 530
the snows around had melted, thick shrubs darkly glowed,
and flocks of birds now huddled in its warm embrace.
Hot breezes wafted round the seven-souled man’s face,
and his eyes brimmed with tears, he opened his stiff lips:
“Beloved mother, O great warmth, sweet breath of earth!” 535
His mind grew supple then, the cold fled from his veins,
and hurriedly he gathered twigs and heaped them high
in a small cave beside the spout, then seized his bow,
and the rocks echoed with the leap of startled wings
as on wild thickets plummeted the plump seabirds. 540
Quickly he took down from his chest the two sharp flints,
gathered an armful of dry twigs and sweetly said:
“Come cast into my ready hearth your final bloom,
the crimson bud of fire, grandfather, to warm us both.”
He struck sparks then, and the blood leapt within his veins 545
as in the hearth he cast the birds, sat down cross-legged,
clasped himself round his waist with love, his legs, his knees,
groped at his chest, and then caressed his white-haired head:
“O seven-souled, you’ve stood up well, you won’t die yet:
limbs, bow, and fire and mind—all weapons are in their place; 550
perhaps for a whole month, perhaps for two or three,
perhaps for even four, you’ll still hold out on earth!”
He smiled, stretched in the cave with sated belly, plunged
like a dolphin to deep sleep, and when the sun arose
it found him upright with pursed lips, plotting his icy way. 555
The pearly day glowed like a tunny’s silver belly,
thick flocks of white birds screamed and fished among the waves,
and far away a bear raised high its shining snout
and growled with joy as though it sniffed at human flesh.
The lone man crossed through snows and climbed as his brains shook; 560
rocks stretched in rows like ancient dragons turned to stone,
needle-sharp barren summits rose, ice-covered slopes,
a flaming mouth that once had yelled, though not a soul
had heard, then clenched its teeth with scorn in a vast hush.
The lone man felt the silence seep deep in his heart; 565
he, too, like that burst mountain once had roared and shook
and now would freeze to ice in a vast silent spell.
On a tall barren boulder he discerned blurred marks,
approached, then clearly traced wild vine and laurel leaves
and a sharp-pointed date-tree branch deeply incised 570
in the old bony memory of primordial rock.
His heart throbbed, and he hailed the leaves like long-lost brothers:
“I bow and worship the sun’s sweet and flaming cries,
O my belovèd comrades, laurel, date, and vine!”
The untamed hermit then caressed the traces there 575
of a far passion vanished in oblivion now,
but joyed to think that, eons after, one lone man
had passed by and caressed life’s long-dead graven bones.
As thus the lone man mused, the snows had turned dark blue,
and fear swept through his mind to think how soon the sun 580
now sank before it had well climbed the crystal peaks.
The days crouched low, and the renowned sunflower shrank;
life stood on its hind legs like a white polar bear,
danced slowly in the dusk, played with its cub, the sun,
and licked its face so that it dwindled day by day. 585
The archer gazed on the snow-covered threshing floors,
but when a strong wind swept and froze the flesh and mind,
he turned back, shivering, to his windless cave once more.
A heap of dark leaves waited for the burning spark,
ashes glowed wanly still for man’s brief consolation, 590
and when Odysseus saw his traces, his heart pulsed
as though he’d crossed the sill of his ancestral home,
and his frostbitten lips moved in a mumbling sigh:
“How long shall I change houses and betray my hearths?
How many times have I rolled on far shores, alone, 595
with a land breeze for covering, pebbles for my bed,
and not one crumb of dry bread even to feed my heart?
Life, you’ve a thousand faces, and I love them all!”
He spoke, then squatted, lit the fire, filled the hearth
with plump seabirds that he might eat and warm his soul. 600
He munched and gazed on the fierce fire, his savage friend;
the two of them could softly chat for endless nights
in mute recall of all they’d done and burnt on earth,
but from his toil exhausted, the lone man stretched out
beside his flame-eyed stalwart friend and sank to sleep. 605
He had not seen his mother in his dreams for years,
as though the earth with gaping mouth had gulped her whole;
nor had her sorrowing sacred smile appeared again
to sweeten her belovèd son’s tumultuous dreams,
and of all this the archer secretly complained. 610
That night at last he dreamt of her as though he were
in his old father’s palace when the stars shone bright
and she lay dying in her royal bed, as pale as wax.
He saw himself kneel by her side and hold her hand
and listen to the thin blood thickening in her veins 615
as slowly the sweet misted warmth of life dissolved.
All night he stroked and fondled her white sweating hair,
then, as his lower jawbone trembled, he stooped, pale,
and kissed her deeply sunken eyes, now turned to glass.
“Mother, don’t fear, you’ll wake soon from this ugly dream 620
and in your courtyards call your slaves to gird themselves
and start again their ancient, daily household tasks.
Mother, now here’s a secret to rejoice your heart:
last night your daughter-in-law woke up in a great fright
for in her fruitful womb she’d felt a painful throb; 625
Mother, your pallid hands shall hold a grandson soon!”
As her son talked, the unmoving mother sweetly drank
the happy news along her heavy body’s length
like Mother Earth absorbing the slow, drenching rain.
Her son stooped low and kissed her eyes, then talked once more 630
that silence might not cut, alas, the thread of joy:
“Mother, it’s almost break of day, the cock will crow,
and the bad dream that struck you will disperse in
wind;
at morning when you rise with your brain clear as light
you’ll call us all and laughingly expound your dream: 635
‘Death means a good and blessèd wedding in all dreams;
only, I saw it with such starkness, my heart froze;
but may my son be blessed who has so well consoled me.’
Mother, do you hear? Ah, there, you smile and move your eyes!”
All night the son cried out and fought invisible hands 640
and held his mother tightly clasped to keep her warm,
but that great Octopus, grim Death, had gripped her feet,
now numb with cold, and mutely spread his tentacles
to her old bony ankles, her shrunk thighs, her waist,
and her afflicted son stooped low and watched them rise 645
till they should touch her warm heart, and his mother die.
He held her thus embraced in his dream all night long,
and when he woke at dawn his heart had turned to stone;
he could not lift his arms, as though he still clasped tight
his frozen mother’s heavy though invisible corpse. 650
By crawling slowly, he massed twigs, then lit a fire,
stretched out his blue-black deadened body near the flames,
and as it warmed and new life once more flapped its wings,
he quickly roasted heaps of birds on the hot hearth
then hung them thickly round his waist and mutely took 655
the hopeless upward slope of the snow-covered wastes.
When he first stepped in light, the sun’s beams dazed his eyes,
and for a moment his mind spun with myriad suns
that danced flame-red, gold, azure in his blackened sight
till all at length distilled and only the sun’s head 660
remained like a pale phantom on the sky’s low rim
and rolled on the iced mountain peaks, sad and forlorn.
As the death-hunter stumbled on with bloodstained feet,
light followed him on all four paws, a frozen dog,
climbed quivering up the hills, then vanished in the snows. 665
Stars lit their myriad candles in the sparkling air,
icicles glittered in straight rows, and slowly night
poured like a blue-green river in a ruined world.
Sliding and tumbling on the ice, rising again,
Death’s stalwart pilgrim was besmirched with blood and snow, 670
and as he lurched toward a white doom with bloodstained beard,
and heavy crystal ice hung down his hoary head,
he gently raised his eyes and saw low at the sky’s rim
a flaming brilliance leap and darkly flash with gold
as the mute pallid prince of night rose in the sky. 675
The ice-fields laughed and gleamed, snows with, reflection glowed,
until the lone man’s footprints shone with silver rims.
“O white musk siren-wine distilled from the moon’s vineyards,
neither a maid’s embracements nor sleep’s downy clasp
can ever surpass your softness or your tender touch.” 680
Then his mind gently hovered in a sweet caress:
“O moon, O snow-white peacock, O ice-crystal sun,
O blooming pale moonflower in death’s garden plot,
bleak silver mirror where I mutely watch my face!”
As he still welcomed and caressed the precious moon 685
he saw a lofty hill in its seductive glow,
climbed to the summit on all fours, spied like a hawk,
then cried out—either his eyes played tricks or a town flashed
with round huts made of ice blocks that in starlight gleamed.
He cocked his ears, and when he heard the bark of dogs, 690
sweet tears ran down his cheeks, and his lips wanly smiled:
“Lady Life stretches out her snow-white hands and wants me still!”
The dogs had smelled him from afar and rushed up growling,
but stout Odysseus raised his freezing arms in rage
and mutely stood prepared to shoot with tautened bow 695
as from the ice blocks tall men-seeming shadows leapt
and shrilled with fear when in a lightning bolt they saw
a snow-white god advance with a horned bow stretched taut.
Oil lamps with quivering wicks were fetched, and old men cried:
“The Great Ancestor, the Great Spirit has left his shores! 700
He must have frozen in Hades, thrashed by mighty Hunger,
and now with chattering teeth runs toward the warmth of man!”
An old man, fat as a seal, rolled at the archer’s feet:
“Grandfather, O Good Spirit, welcome! I kiss your heels!
I am the great witch doctor whom the stars have told 705
that you were coming, hungry, that you’d left your ice,
and would soon deign to stay awhile by our poor hearths.
Enter, there’s fire to warm you, and blubber to make you fat.”
Without a word, the great death-archer stooped and crossed
the old man’s sill, enthroned himself like a great lord 710
before a burning stone-lamp, then stretched out his hands.
He warmed himself and ate while the witch doctor sang
charms of his holy coming, smeared him with warm grease,
then spread a snow-bench with fat hides for him to sleep.
The suffering man then shut his eyes and smiled with joy; 715
the blubber of the seal seemed good, and good the warmth,
and his coquetting luck seemed good as flickering fire,
so that he crossed his hands and sank in a white sleep.
Odysseus slept, and felt the family round him sleep
and meekly breathe like gentle cows in steaming stalls, 720
and the flame’s hearth burned in their midst, a sleepless gold.
O Fire, how you flicked in darkness like the heart
of man, a holy, sleepless, pure and large-eyed love!
In other lands where the sun’s blazing kiln shoots down
with savage spears, you jig like a gay dancer, call 725
like decoy-birds, nude, shameless, with your jangling bells,
but in Death’s snow-frost here, in icy solitude,
you willingly keep vigil, Fire, a small sister
who all night long keeps watch above her ailing brothers.
O Fire, you are a mother’s knees, a cousin’s laugh, 730
the honeyed sweetness of our youngest, smallest sister.
The lone man’s body warmed and brimmed from head to toe
with loving kindness and deep joy; if only, God,
he could embrace the fire tightly like a young maid!
When he awoke in the dim dawn, he fixed his eyes 735
in silence on the flames for a long time and heard
them lick and lap his brains like a belovèd hound.
Through a thin opening in the roof of snow and ice,
pale beams of light crawled slowly in the mewed-up hut
where men and dogs, twined in close mounds, were still asleep, 740
and crawling flames caressed their sallow swollen faces.
Stifling, the archer raised the pelt that hid the entrance,
to breathe fresh air and to revive his smothered lungs,
but stepped back, startled, as sharp needles pricked his face,
and blew upon his hands with joy in the warm stench. 745
A maiden woke and screamed with fright to see him there,
but the old couple slowly rose without a word
and filled the lamp with lumps of grease to feed the fire
so that the brazen pot above it might soon boil
with the fat larded remnants of the slaughtered seal. 750
An old crone struggled with the pot and lowly tasks
and the witch doctor
knelt beneath a small round hole
where a rare drop of light dripped slowly, raised his hands,
busied himself with higher worship till his choked
and pleading voice was heard in fear: “Don’t kill us, God!” 755
and the god-slayer shuddered, feeling the man’s dread.
Man-eating God was drops of light in these night lands;
he struck man heartlessly, then stood with ax in hand
beside a home’s dark door, killed all who dared to pass,
and man, poor ruined wretch, raised high his pallid hands 760
and begged, not for good comforts or one drop of joy,
nor even for one bright plume to stick into his mind,
but only for one precious grace: not to be slain!
When the witch doctor dropped his arms, his face turned calm,
and he bowed low and dumbly at the archer’s feet; 765
meanwhile the food had boiled, and all with greedy haste
sat round the brilliant fire, women, dogs, and men.
Odysseus ached to see such stark submissive fear,
and with distended nostrils deeply breathed in all
these pale new comrades who had chanced on his fate’s road. 770
What crops of body-battling men swarm on the earth,
and everywhere the same salt burning tears run down,
whether on white or yellow cheeks, or on black jaws!
Earth had now filled with these dark grease-smeared swarms of men,
and the great wanderer wanly smiled and reached his hand 775
to touch the maiden’s hair, but like a mare she neighed
with frothing lips and drew back toward the steaming pot,
spread out the meal as all grabbed at seal-lumps and gulped
them down till the lard flowed, encrusting chins and necks.
When all had eaten and wrapped themselves in warming pelts, 780
the snow-tent’s heavy door-hide opened with slow stealth
and the town elders humbly came with precious gifts
for the Great Spirit who had moored in their poor haunts:
lard, hides and hounds, so that the Spirit might feed well
and wrap itself in good warm pelts when hunting seals. 785
The wandering man received the gifts without a word,
ate of the blubber, took the dogs, thrust in the hides,
and the town chief rejoiced that God now dressed like man
and like a man ate of their fat and blessed their dogs.
They stepped back through the door and disappeared in mist. 790
The archer rose to bid the failing light farewell:
“O daily marvel, flaming fellow-countryman,
O Sun, we’ve both here lost our way in this dark dungeon;
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