forgive me, friend, and may you also be forgiven.’
Thus did the wave-brained god address me and embrace me,
and like two dolphins we caressed in azure air.
Joyfully then tall wisdom’s goddess came and placed 265
her spear-delighting hand on my wave-whitened hair:
‘Dear friend, the nights of the Immortals have no dawn,
and we have longed for you to come and cheer our hearts.
Much-suffering man, sit by my right on the high throne
and open wide your heart, your brains, and your thick lips, 270
for all gods long to hear of man’s ordeals and cares.’
Athena spoke, and the gods came from their high thrones
and pressed about me to admire my aging body,
my puckered hands and feet devoured by sun and brine.
They treated me to deathless wine, and the small-waisted 275
goddess of youth knelt down and loosed my sandal straps,
but as I gazed between the golden columns down
on the blue sea that spread and laughed in blazing sun,
I suddenly felt that dreams had snatched my giddy brain,
and with great rage I shook my empty head from sleep 280
until the sacred mountain swayed like dazzling mist, and vanished,
“It seems that hunger must have driven my poor wits crazy;
the gods had found me stripped of weapons, ready to hand,
and mocked my mind with shifting visions of firm land;
ah, had I but one bite of bread, one sip of water! 285
As I blasphemed, it seemed to me I heard before me
in the sea-fog a bestial cry, a woman’s laughter,
and my keel gliding, skidding gently on smooth sand.
I rushed to the prow headlong, tried to pierce the fog,
and saw a thickly wooded isle, a snaky path, 290
a beach of yellow sand that spread like scattered wheat,
and on the shore a young girl stood and held her breasts,
and all her blue-black body steamed as poured from bronze.
Two slender jet-black leopards leapt and danced about her,
licking her rounded belly and her small-shaped feet 295
while she smiled broadly with her thick black hair unbraided,
and her man-eating teeth like stars flashed in the fog.
Her breasts leapt high like two wild beasts to welcome me,
and I said, trembling, ‘I’ve not seen a deeper face of death!
My soul, do not betray man’s narrow pass to virtue!’ 300
But when I’d washed myself within her golden rooms
and food was spread in the cool grove, and winecups foamed,
and heard her sweet voice, then my duty was all forgotten.
‘My dear, you’ve washed and eaten till your veins flow free,
your sturdy body glows like a crisp youth of twenty; 305
welcome, beloved, let’s play in bed with fun and frolic.’
She spread a layer of marjoram, a layer of basil,
and like a thousand-year-old cave, her bed resounded.
The sun stood still, the soul rolled down her curly pit
and vanished, man’s bright face became pig-snouted till 310
the sleepless flame that trembles high between man’s brows
went out, for fragrant flowers, virtues, shames, and love,
alas, grow on the surface only, wither in haste away,
and Mother Mud grips firmly in our deepest roots.
How to forget, dear God, the joy that shook my loins 315
when I saw virtue, light, and soul all disappearing!
With twisted hands and thighs we rolled on burning sands,
a hanging mess of hissing vipers glued in sun!
Slowly my speech turned mute within me, hearth-flames choked,
the infected mind, weighed down with flesh, plunged in my guts, 320
for as small insects slowly sink and drown in amber,
so in my turbid mind beasts, trees, and mortals sank.
In time my heart was battered to a mess of fat
where passions flared and vanished in a torpid daze
till we plunged, grunting, deep into a bestial pit. 325
I lay well fitted in foul flesh, while man’s great cares,
his hopes, flames and ascensions flew in scattering air.
Farewell the brilliant voyage, ended! Prow and soul
moored in the muddy port of the contented beast!
O prodigal, much-traveled soul, is this your country?” 330
Then the world-wandering athlete sighed and scowled with wrath;
for a long time he gazed upon the flames in silence
but all at once a jolting laughter brimmed his throat:
“God, if this is our country, the mind has many skills
to rip it up with all its roots and build a prow!” 335
He spoke, then twirled the spindle of his mind once more:
“One day as I lay grunting in my fleshly sty,
I saw a light smoke rising on the shore, a fire,
and round it squatted men who with slit rushes pierced
a row of fish and roasted them on glowing coals. 340
A woman with a baby at her bosom stooped,
unbared her breasts till her son grasped her nipples tight,
and she refreshed him like a fountain of pure milk.
As the fish reddened and their fragrance smote the nostrils,
the fishermen pressed round the fire and sat cross-legged, 345
and when the mother came with outstretched hands, they filled
her palms with double portions of black bread and fish.
They ate with greed, munched silently, and watched the sea,
then wiped their long mustaches, tipped their flasks of wine,
drank deep, passed it from man to man, last to the mother. 350
O poor immortal comforts: fish, some bread and wine,
the blue sea stretched before you as you slowly munch
and feel your spirit fortified, your flesh renewed!
I felt, dear God, that I myself once knew such joy.
After the meal, they raised their hands to burning skies 355
and the glad mother swayed her torso right and left
and poured into the air a slow sweet lullaby.
The words fell emptily and sank in my mind’s marsh
but I received the sweet sounds in my breast, and there
the parched and thick-skinned leaves of my heart trembled. 360
With pain I struggled to recall as my chest heaved:
great courtyards, vineyards, ancient olive trees and fig,
a marble-throated woman that suckled my only son—
oho, to climb a mountain peak, to shout and yell!
Then all at once my throat swelled and my neck veins burst; 365
tears brought me near you once again, O race of man.
Once more I hewed the forest, carved out new-shaped wings,
oars, sails and masts so that the soul might rise for flight;
once more, O joy, winds blessed my sails, and I swept free!
The man-enflaming, high-rumped maid screamed on the shore, 370
the leopards leapt like flames about her, flicked their tails,
and all the sun-washed bodies called from burning sands:
Where are you going, to the crags of man, to the cliffs of his mind?
Where are you going, beautiful body, smashed like a jug?
My breast is your native land, for no matter where you go, 375
you’ll not find such a tranquil port, such sweet oblivion.
The soul of woman is very sweet, for it is filled with flesh!’
“Shrill sounds and passion’s exclamations slowly faded
as in the fiery sunlight the sandy harbor vanished.
All day I sailed to windward, and my vessel beat 380
like a poor human heart escaped from the jaws of death;
at night the heavens glowered and filled with lightning bolts,
the sea clutched at the sky, sea-demons danced on billows,
and their harsh laughter burst about my head and roared.
I heard them quarreling how to seize and share amongst them 385
like vultures, my strong ribs, my brains, my eyes, my entrails,
but with my ship for shield, I fought them breast to breast
and held on tightly to keep flesh and bone together.
But in the frenzied dawn the searing lightning smashed
my sails and planking, and I plunged in roaring waves 390
and grit my teeth to keep my fainting soul from drowning.
I cut through all the flooding waves with wide breast strokes
until my hands at daybreak hooked on jagged rocks.
Oho, firm land, I’ve seized you and plant roots once more!
Laughing and crying, I kissed the earth and stretched on stones, 395
and it was then Death’s sweetest face rose to confront me.”
The seven-souled man ceased, knelt down and fed the flames
with stacks of laurel boughs until the crackling fire
sent a sweet fragrance spreading through the dazzled house.
For a long time he stooped to admire, wrapped in thought, 400
how the flames slowly licked the boughs caressingly,
crawled up to their dark tips and tightly bound them round
while they burned on, uncaring, all their twigs ablaze.
The man of many cares laughed secretly and stroked his beard:
“Death masqueraded like the virgin of a noble tribe 405
who on the beach smiled softly at a shipwrecked man,
and my much-suffering heart rejoiced to smell the ripe
and mortal body, the humble holy warmth of man.
She was not a divine, tall crystal peak, nor yet
a smoking, hungry blaze confined in a beast’s loins; 410
I marveled now at man himself on earth, and joyed
to see myself reflected wholly in her eyes.
She neither raised me to the empty sky nor hurled
me down to Hades, but we walked on earth together,
and my wild backbone trilled with sweetest fluting sounds: 415
‘Lucky that worthy man who sleeps with her as bridegroom!
This is the sweetest siren of all, see how she waves!
See how her holy bosom yearns to suckle men!
Dear God, to build a home at length, to smash my ship,
to make a crossbeam of its mast, its hull a bed, 420
and its old, sea-embattled prow my own son’s cradle!’
But I made my heart stone, precisely weighed all things
between my just mid-brow till Reason stood erect:
When in my native land one’ day I’ve moored for good,
then I shall load a many-oared, tall bridal galley 425
with fragrant honey, wheat, and wine to sail and buy
this sun-washed nest of children for my only son.’
My heart had never gleaned such rooted Victory;”
Odysseus sealed his bitter lips and spoke no more,
but watched the glowering fire fade, the withering flames, 430
the ash that spread like powder on the dying coals,
then turned, glanced at his wife, gazed on his son and father,
and suddenly shook with fear, and sighed, for now he knew
that even his native land was a sweet mask of Death.
Like a wild beast snared in a net, his eyes rolled round 435
and tumbled down his deep eye-sockets, green and bloodshot.
His tribal palace seemed a narrow shepherd’s pen,
his wife a small and wrinkled old housekeeping crone,
his son an eighty-year-old drudge who, trembling, weighed
with care to find what’s just, unjust, dishonest, honest, 440
as though all life were prudence, as though fire were just,
and logic the highest good of eagle-mounting man!
The heart-embattled athlete laughed, dashed to his feet,
and his home’s sweetness, suddenly, his longed-for land,
the twelve gods, ancient virtue by his honored hearth, 445
his son—all seemed opposed now to his high descent.
The fire dwindled and died away, and the four heads
and his son’s smooth-skinned calves with tender softness glowed
till in the trembling hush Penelope’s wan cries
broke in despair like water flowing down a wall. 450
Her son dashed and stood upright by his mother’s throne,
touched gently with a mute compassion her white arm,
then gazed upon his father in the dim light, and shuddered,
for in the last resplendence of the falling fire
he could discern the unmoving eyes flash yellow, blue, 455
and crimson, though the dark had swallowed the wild body.
With silent strides Odysseus then shot back the bolt,
passed lightly through the courtyard and sped down the street.
Some saw him take the graveyard’s zigzag mountain path,
some saw him leap on rocks that edged the savage shore, 460
some visionaries saw him in the dead of night
swimming and talking secretly with the sea-demons,
but only a small boy saw him in a lonely dream
sit crouched and weeping by the dark sea’s foaming edge.
Death is a skillful pruner, trims the trees and knows 465
what bough shall wither and what flower will turn to fruit.
At cock crow once when old Laertes could not sleep
he crawled to the main court and poked his aged nurse.
When he was young he’d slept with her in joy one night
then left her all her life to weave in his dank vaults; 470
but now that he hung drooping like a rotting fig,
he’d brought her back to care for him in his old age;
this was the ancient crone whom he now prod at dawn.
The old nurse opened startled eyes and in the dusk
perceived the bald pate of her master softly gleam 475
as over it two black, enormous, wide wings fell.
“The poor man knows he’s lying in Death’s shadow now.”
Thus did she think, then tied her kerchief silently,
lit up the fire and put some fragrant mint to boil
so that the infirm old man might drink and brace his heart, 480
but he stood by the door for fear he’d leave too late.
Guessing he wished to hasten to his loved grove and there
give up his soul at last to the trees’ holy roots,
she wrapped him tight in a warm mantle, took his arm,
and both together crossed the court, unbarred the gate 485
with shaking hands, and stumbled up the farmhouse path.
The cloudy dawn hung trembling on the verge of tears,
earth smelled of musk, the olive trees still dripped with dew,
and misty morn cried in its cradle like a child.
A fat crow passed them to the right with whistling wings 490
and the old woman cursed it with the curse of death;
but others came and cawed in chorus joyously
and played and coupled lovingly in the dim air
nor smelled an old man’s corpse nor heard the frail crone’s cry.
When finally they reached the orchard’s matted fence, 495
light broke, the slaves had wakened and were hard at work,
and in the moist air cocks thrust out their necks and crowed.
As the old man grew tired, she made him lean against
the ancestral hollow olive tree that kept the gate,
gave him a gourd of old wine that his knees might
knit, 500
and he with both hands grasped the dripping wine-bowl fast
and drank deep gulps to strengthen his exhausted heart.
He felt the warmth spread down his vitals, his eyes shone,
till in his darkening head his mind cast its last beams.
He saw then his loved orchard, spread his joyful hands 505
and slowly greeted all his trees, each by its name:
“O my sweet apple tree with apples hung, O loved
and honeyed fig tree, thin-shelled almond, musk-grape vines,
farewell, I fall to earth. Eat me, O mother-roots!
I, too, am the earth’s fruit, and rot; dry leaf, and fall!” 510
Wagging their tails, his two white hounds rushed up and barked,
then leapt upon him lovingly and whined with joy
as their old master leant his hands on their thin ribs
and drank deep of his dogs’ warmth and the earth’s odor.
The flower-laden trees glowed softly, cloaked with mist, 515
honeybees buzzed and swarmed till leaves and branches swayed,
and two old ewes, which the old man had raised, came bleating
and sought to lick his warped, beloved, familiar hands,
A musk-roe gently raised with pride his clever head,
recognized his old master, his eyes shone with joy, 520
and like a prince approached to greet the frail old man
who gathered all beasts in his shade now like a tree.
His nurse stood by his side and wept, for she knew well
the mind was but a lamp that flares and fades forever
and that Laertes hailed the world for the last time. 525
When a fat ancient crow he once had nourished came,
brimming with joy, and perched on his right shoulder blade,
he shook with fear to feel the harsh beak in his ear
and closed his eyes as heavy sweat poured down his body.
His nurse cried bitterly, the servants gathered close, 530
the faithful cowherds came, taking the cows to pasture,
and shepherd boys approached, holding their crooked sticks.
The slaves pressed round their master, grasped his withered knees
and his damp hands and begged him not to leave them now,
but he, far from his living friends, with empty gaze, 535
blinked his dim eyes and leant on the old olive tree;
he stood on Hades’ threshold mutely, eased of care,
and turned his pale face round and bid the world farewell.
Kneeling before the death-doomed man, his nurse cried out:
“Dear master, let me send a slave to fetch your son.” 540