“Not on a sheep’s bone, and not even on our backs; 470
fate writes on water, a wind blows, and all things vanish.”
He cast his glance about and harrowed each loved form
that sat and ate in shadow or on fine sands played;
the young men armed themselves, the women polished weapons,
and babies woke and thrashed their feet and bawled for milk. 475
Though all his friends talked on of Death, he kept his peace
and watched with pleasure how his ankle-vein swelled up,
like a fierce pulsing spring that thrust through the rich soil,
A rough beast roared and reared in the man-killer’s breast,
but light is an unpitying whip that tames all beasts, 480
and the mind rose in mockery and reproved the heart:
“For shame, bereaved and bitter heart! Still, still inured
to this ignoble, bloody game on the green wold?
Man, like the dew, lies on the grass, then melts away.”
He gazed on stars; night hung at zenith, thousand-eyed: 485
“A scurvy dog lives on, my lads, so don’t you fear!
Belt on your arms, it’s shameful now to talk of death;
let’s pass through these brief hours together, arm in arm.”
All felt ashamed and leapt up till their bone-joints creaked;
the pointed head rose proudly with swashbuckling dreams: 490
“Boys, let me take my flute and play you my last tune.
You’ll see, the catch will burst with joy and goad Death on.”
But the archer thought it now unfitting to mock fate:
“Hadn’t you better change your reed for a sword, piper?
You’ve plenty of time to warble after the gory battle, 495
if you’ve still got your lips, that is, and we our ears.
Here’s to our meeting, friends, and may Fate’s will be done.”
Then the conch blared, and Death, the horseman, charged at once.
Bold Granite grasped his iron arms, but they grasped him
before he grasped them tight, shook him before he shook them, 500
and like a hound he harried the troops and roused the youths.
Lightfooted as a night-beast, while his armor blazed
with savage streaks of blue in the star-glittering night,
the castle-wrecker with his chiefs dashed to the fray.
Kentaur rolled like a stream in the army’s straggling rear 505
while at his side the piper hopped, a long-legged stork;
and last of all Death stalked with crooked shepherd’s staff
pelting his votive lambs with stones, whistling, goading them on.
At midnight, sentries caught the tramp of hurrying feet,
turbid, tempestuous on the sands, and the reeds shook; 510
but as they opened their mouths wide to sound the alarm,
gaunt Granite fell upon them with his naked blade
and cut their throats till neck and voice both spilled on sand.
Tall flaring torches fluttered everywhere, tents shook,
all seized their weapons hurriedly, the darkness shrieked, 515
and foes and friends entwined and hissed like tangled snakes.
Odysseus strode among the troops with raging heart,
his hands burned and flashed flame, his glittering double-ax
fell mightily, broke bones and clove whole backs in two.
Spear crashed on spear in heavy fight, sword clashed on shield, 520
the great mass smashed the small and pressed hard on its heels,
till in the slaughter’s tumult Granite’s thin voice cried;
“Archer, goodbye! Comrades, I plunge to Hades now!
If ever a bitter word escaped my lips, forgive me, friends!”
Whirling his sharp ax like a windmill, the archer yelled: 525
“Granite, grasp your soul tight between your teeth! Be brave!”
These words had barely left his lips when his brains flared:
a whistling arrow flicked his ear, pierced through his cheek,
and black blood filled his mouth and brimmed his lips with poison.
Granite rushed up to catch his friend in his weak arms 530
but the strong thrust of a spear crashed him to his knees.
The enemy roared with rage and rushed with savage spears:’
“Now all together, strike them hard! These two are beasts!”
and both those famous forms had vanished from earth forever
had Kentaur with his buffalo bulk not breached the attack 535
and suffered five sword-thusts from which five rivers ran,
for when he heard his master’s groans in the vast din,
he rushed, though steeped in blood, to live or die together.
Blond and black bodies rolled in the thick mud entwined,
clasped arm to arm and breast to breast with groans and roars; 540
their hot brains spilled and steamed, sticky with hair and blood.
Hawkeye was tumbled down and rolled along the bank
as five tall bodies dragged him, pummeled, kicked, and struck,
but when he saw five workers in the dim light, he yelled:
“Comrades, I’m on your side! I fight for freedom too!” 545
But, ah, alas, Death would not hear, and the five struck him
until his fountaining voice of freedom choked in blood.
Scarab had heard his comrade’s cry in the fierce din
and rushed to help him, but a strong hand grasped his nape,
flung him to earth and rubbed his face in grimy dust, 550
but when in the dawn’s smile he saw the small beast-eyes
of a dry shriveled peasant-slave enflamed with rage,
then Scarab’s words came tumbling in a swift cascade:
“Friend, I’m a peasant too and fight that all may share
the land . . .” but his voice stopped as a sharp lance plunged down 555
and made a mash of his rebellious plowman’s brains.
Dawn’s light began to whiten as the stars grew dim,
torn bodies, sprawled in pits of blood, turned red as roses,
and seven flocks of hungry crows swooped through the air.
Kentaur looked up with fear and his hair stood on end; 560
he groaned and tried to move, but his loins screamed with pain
and his heart’s hollows filled with thickening clots of blood,
until, in one last try, the dragon cried: “Odysseus!”
and cocked his ear, although his jawbones shook with fright.
Was he still living? Had the earth gulped their beacon light? 565
A thousand years swept by him in a lightning flash
but all at once that good beast heard a feeble voice
and paid no heed to his cracked loins or hollowed heart,
for through the reeds he recognized his captain’s voice.
Another well-loved voice rose in the battle’s din 570
as Granite’s lips broke through their clotted blood and cried:
“Death shall not take our souls, my friends! Hold them clenched tight!”
Upon the branch-tip of a date palm a bird hopped
then raised its neck toward heaven and sang a happy song,
and on its pulsing throat the sun hung like a charm. 575
At once all life took heart, grim Death became a tune,
and from the bird’s small throat the whole world breathed again.
Poor Kentaur gathered up his gutted bellies, groaning,
but a light fainting-spell blacked out his brains until
it seemed the amber cluster of a grapevine grew 580
in shade close by and gleamed and hovered above his head.
A slender blackbird with a yellow beak drew near
and pecked at the globed fruit while its swift-darting eyes
glanced trembling at that mo
nstrous bulk enthroned in shade.
But Kentaur’s mind dwelt now no longer on the grapes: 585
he saw a girl who swung with vigor through the vines
and her limbs played in light and shade, and her hips swayed,
until his own brains swayed and the field sank and vanished.
He tried to rise then, but the earth shook, and he fell back,
opened his eyes, gazed on the sands, his flowing blood, 590
till his mind cleared, remembered, and his heart grew bitter:
“Mushheads and lamebrains such as mine should crack and spill!
We chucked away grapes, girls, and food’s great joy, to die
for foreign scraps and to kill men we’ve never known!
Shove off, O doddering heart! Quit leading me astray!” 595
Then suddenly he thought of his close friend, and sighed:
“Lads, I don’t hear the piper, and my poor heart breaks!”
The wretched songster tried to open his bruised mouth,
and struggled, but from his lean larynx no sound came,
for a sword’s double stroke had pierced and slit his speech. 600
Time passed, the sun hung in mid-sky, a melting bronze,
and dripped on the heaped bodies of corpse-hoarding Death;
flesh had begun to rot and smell, the crows swarmed near,
fat blowflies swooped and poked in nostrils turning blue,
and all—sun, birds, and soil—began to work with haste 605
and turn those bodies back to the earth’s sunless forge.
At high noon, the king’s herald, in red sandals shod,
passed by and swiftly turned the heads of all the wounded,
then to his followers barked commands in a shrill voice:
“Choose all the chiefs and lave them with our soothing balms, 610
for in the sacred rites to his great fathers, the king
wishes himself to slay those heads that rose against him.”
And when that dying fox, Odysseus, heard those orders,
unlooked-for hope flashed through his mind; he raised his eyes
and saw slaves lift the heavily decked barbarian chiefs, 615
drag Granite’s forty-times-slashed body with great awe;
but seven staggering slaves raised glutton’s monstrous bulk,
panted, and dumped him lengthwise in a low ox-cart.
The herald looked about, then kicked the wounded men
that now were turning blue in the sun’s dripping blaze. 620
“Drive on! I think we’ve gathered all the plume-decked heads;
I see no other haughty pate that breathes or moves—
throw sand on the remaining bodies, thrust them deep.”
But as the cartwheels crunched upon the moldering flesh
on the way back, a hoarse voice rose among the dead: 625
“Water!” the cunning archer groaned, and raised his head.
Then the slaves turned, and when they saw the pointed cap,
they burst in cackling laughs and clapped their dark-skinned palms:
“The greatest chief of all would have escaped our king!”
Four slaves rushed up and raised him high with buckling knees: 630
“This man has wrecked world upon world! He mustn’t escape!”
But when with his hooked glance the archer spied the piper,
he raised shrewd hands and cried out to his humble friend:
“Great chief, here’s to our meeting soon in the deep earth!”
The herald with the crimson sandals turned and saw 635
a pale pate, quivering like a rabbit, rise with fear
as black blood streamed in fountains down its grimy neck,
and the red-sandaled slave burst in loud laughs and kicked him:
“Pick up this sallow broken-down great chief of theirs!
O, how our king will laugh when with his golden feet 640
he tramples on this dry cracked flask and grinds it fine!”
He spoke, they flung poor Orpheus by the archer’s side,
and on that wretch Odysseus placed his heavy paw
like an old lion who mutely guards his toddling newborn cub.
Thus War, the horseman, turned back to his crimson courts 645
and dragged brave gallants by their belts, girls by their braids,
and hung small children from his saddle-horns in clusters.
Behind him the blind followed, stumbling with long staffs,
and some way back the cripples, the armless, the half-wits,
and mothers in long rows who walked alive toward Hades. 650
Full-glutted crows strolled by the riverbank, digesting,
crocodiles sweetly shut their lidded eyes, and yawned,
for the blond meat had been quite good, and in slow rains
new flesh would sprout once more and then be munched anew.
Suns passed and sank in sands until the full moon bloomed 655
like a white rose of silence and perfumed the night;
boughs of the almond withered in spring’s giddy spell
and cast its flowers and downy almonds and green leaves;
trees flowered and bore fruit, time slowly passed, and still
the chiefs in the king’s dungeons stretched and groaned. 660
But Nile lay calm in a far nook, plotting with craft
how to pierce through the thickset walls and walk once more
in sun to heal poor mankind’s fallen, orphaned heart.
To all his comrades, tillers of earth, toilers in shops,
he sent precise dispatches through the dungeon’s grapevine: 665
“Brothers, don’t weep, don’t cry; your pain will soon be healed.”
But round him the barbarians’ eyes were sore with weeping,
and the four friends groped their own bodies with hard hands
to search their savage wounds and count their injuries,
how many teeth had been pushed in and firm ribs crushed. 670
Granite’s gaunt body was a sieve, nor could he bring
his loose jaws yet in line to grind his scanty food.
Orpheus had lost his teeth, and his once babbling mouth
was locked and could not spout as yet with human speech.
Kentaur stooped low and marveled at the sweeping wounds 675
on his huge paunch, then laughed to think they’d not swept lower:
“Oho! Girls would have called me grandma then, not grandpa!”
The archer, with his shattered head wound in waxed cloth,
sat cross-legged on the ground and gave ironic comfort:
“Patience! Don’t weep, my gallant lads; three moons have passed, 680
and the fourth moon, most red of all, shall rise up soon
and like a curly red carnation cleave our throats.
And when all four of us lie stretched in the cold ground
our teeth shall fall far right, our jaws shall spill far left,
our brains, our flesh, our souls, our dreams shall be worms’ food.” 685
Cold shivers shook their spines, yet they all smiled, and smeared
their wounds with a flesh-healing balm to stop gangrene.
But the blond-bearded chieftains stalked like raging lions,
rapped on the walls and probed them, climbed to the light-wells,
until their nails broke out in blood, their hair dripped sweat. 690
In the adjoining dungeons all night long the slaves
wove cloth in closely woven strands, gold-stitched velours,
and their sad dirges licked along the humid walls.
The desperate friends stretched out their necks and cocked their ears
and took the women’s songs for curse and blessing both: 695
“My mind and my loom break in forty fragments now;
may your head, master, break in forty fragments too!
My sons sit on the thrones of patience and wind the spoo
ls,
my daughters wash their long black braids with scalding water,
my shuttle is made of fingernails, my loom of bones, 700
I sit and weave with a black kerchief round my head,
and terrors are my warp and curses my dark woof
until my heart swirls swiftly round on a red reel.
Spin on, spin on, O heart! Finish your master’s shroud, 704
adorn it with tall cypress trees, sequins and swords, 705
hang all your pain for tassels, all your joy for fringe,
make it of coarse thick wool which no soft tears may pierce!
Descend you weary-laden, descend in the dark earth,
help me to finish swiftly my dread master’s shroud,
let each hem hold my pain, each corner hide a crow, 710
a lean voracious crow to peck his heart out bit by bit.”
The dark heart of the archer pitied his poor friends;
longing to find some toy that would divert their minds,
he took twelve slender sticks and hacked and whittled out
twelve cross-eyed earless gods in matched pairs, two by two, 715
then through their swollen bellies passed a crimson thread,
and laughed, for when he pulled the string the poor gods danced,
kicked up their feet and hands, wagged their lugubrious heads,
and a thin cry, “I’m hungry!” sprang from their bare guts.
His comrades roared with laughter, and the chiefs pressed close, 720
played with the red string, laughed, and passed their time away
until their minds grew bold with battling gods and air.
Then the poor piper blabbered with his toothless gums:
“I’ve heard it said that when the octopus is starving
and chews one of its arms, another sprouts up soon, 725
Aye, octopus, I see you’ve enjoyed renewal now!”
But Nile stood up and shook his bald resourceful head:
“What pity, archer, to waste your strength on games and laughs,
to squander it thus on hidden and quite useless rage.
You too once labored for an hour, struck out for freedom, 730
but now your mind once more stoops under ancient yokes,
because the soul that mocks at God is God’s slave still.”
But the archer snorted like a stud and would not answer;
with shattered head erect, he murmured in his heart:
“Their god is just and good, he holds his scales aloft 735
and portions bread and brains to all in equal shares;
but my god smothers in my chest, no justice holds him,
nor these old-lady virtues nor man’s mortal joys.”