210 if I were in your straits. My every impulse
bends to what is right. Not iron, trust me,
the heart within my breast. I am all compassion.”
And lustrous Calypso quickly led the way
as he followed in the footsteps of the goddess.
They reached the arching cavern, man and god as one,
and Odysseus took the seat that Hermes just left,
while the nymph set out before him every kind
of food and drink that mortal men will take.
Calypso sat down face-to-face with the king
220 and the women served her nectar and ambrosia.
They reached out for the good things that lay at hand
and when they’d had their fill of food and drink
the lustrous one took up a new approach. “So then,
royal son of Laertes, Odysseus, man of exploits,
still eager to leave at once and hurry back
to your own home, your beloved native land?
Good luck to you, even so. Farewell!
228 But if you only knew, down deep, what pains
are fated to fill your cup before you reach that shore,
230 you’d stay right here, preside in our house with me
and be immortal. Much as you long to see your wife,
the one you pine for all your days . . . and yet
I just might claim to be nothing less than she,
neither in face nor figure. Hardly right, is it,
for mortal woman to rival immortal goddess?
How, in build? in beauty?”
“Ah great goddess,”
worldly Odysseus answered, “don’t be angry with me,
please. All that you say is true, how well I know.
Look at my wise Penelope. She falls far short of you,
240 your beauty, stature. She is mortal after all
and you, you never age or die . . .
Nevertheless I long —I pine, all my days —
to travel home and see the dawn of my return.
And if a god will wreck me yet again on the wine-dark sea,
I can bear that too, with a spirit tempered to endure.
244 Much have I suffered, labored long and hard by now
in the waves and wars. Add this to the total —
bring the trial on!”
Even as he spoke
the sun set and the darkness swept the earth.
250 And now, withdrawing into the cavern’s deep recesses,
long in each other’s arms they lost themselves in love.
When young Dawn with her rose-red fingers shone once more
Odysseus quickly dressed himself in cloak and shirt
while the nymph slipped on a loose, glistening robe,
filmy, a joy to the eye, and round her waist
she ran a brocaded golden belt
and over her head a scarf to shield her brow,
then turned to plan the great man’s voyage home.
She gave him a heavy bronze ax that fit his grip,
260 both blades well-honed, with a fine olive haft
lashed firm to its head. She gave him a polished
smoothing-adze as well and then she led the way
to the island’s outer edge where trees grew tall,
alders, black poplars and firs that shot sky-high,
seasoned, drying for years, ideal for easy floating.
Once she’d shown her guest where the tall timber stood,
Calypso the lustrous goddess headed home again.
He set to cutting trunks —the work was done in no time.
Twenty in all he felled, he trimmed them clean with his ax
270 and split them deftly, trued them straight to the line.
Meanwhile the radiant goddess brought him drills —
he bored through all his planks and wedged them snugly,
knocking them home together, locked with pegs and joints.
Broad in the beam and bottom flat as a merchantman
when a master shipwright turns out her hull,
so broad the craft Odysseus made himself.
Working away at speed
he put up half-decks pinned to close-set ribs
and a sweep of gunwales rounded off the sides.
280 He fashioned the mast next and sank its yard in deep
and added a steering-oar to hold her right on course,
then he fenced her stem to stern with twigs and wicker,
bulwark against the sea-surge, floored with heaps of brush.
And lustrous Calypso came again, now with bolts of cloth
to make the sail, and he finished that off too, expertly.
Braces, sheets and brails —he rigged all fast on board,
then eased her down with levers into the sunlit sea.
That was the fourth day and all his work was done.
On the fifth, the lovely goddess launched him from her island,
290 once she had bathed and decked him out in fragrant clothes.
And Calypso stowed two skins aboard —dark wine in one,
the larger one held water —added a sack of rations,
filled with her choicest meats to build his strength,
and summoned a wind to bear him onward, fair and warm.
The wind lifting his spirits high, royal Odysseus
spread sail —gripping the tiller, seated astern —
and now the master mariner steered his craft,
sleep never closing his eyes, forever scanning
299 the stars, the Pleiades and the Plowman late to set
300 and the Great Bear that mankind also calls the Wagon:
301 she wheels on her axis always fixed, watching the Hunter,
and she alone is denied a plunge in the Ocean’s baths.
Hers were the stars the lustrous goddess told him
to keep hard to port as he cut across the sea.
And seventeen days he sailed, making headway well;
on the eighteenth, shadowy mountains slowly loomed . . .
the Phaeacians’ island reaching toward him now,
over the misty breakers, rising like a shield.
But now Poseidon, god of the earthquake, saw him —
310 just returning home from his Ethiopian friends,
311 from miles away on the Solymi mountain-range
he spied Odysseus sailing down the sea
and it made his fury boil even more.
He shook his head and rumbled to himself,
315 “Outrageous! Look how the gods have changed their minds
about Odysseus —while I was off with my Ethiopians.
317 Just look at him there, nearing Phaeacia’s shores
318 where he’s fated to escape his noose of pain
that’s held him until now. Still my hopes ride high —
320 I’ll give that man his swamping fill of trouble!”
With that he rammed the clouds together —both hands
clutching his trident —churned the waves into chaos, whipping
all the gales from every quarter, shrouding over in thunderheads
the earth and sea at once —and night swept down from the sky —
East and South Winds clashed and the raging West and North,
sprung from the heavens, roiled heaving breakers up —
and Odysseus’ knees quaked, his spirit too;
numb with fear he spoke to his own great heart:
“Wretched man —what becomes of me now, at last?
330 I fear the nymph foretold it all too well —
on the high seas, she said, before I can reach
my native land I’ll fill my cup of pain! And now,
look, it all comes to pass. What monstrous clouds —
King Zeus crowning the whole wide heaven black —
churning the seas in chaos, gales blasting,
raging around my head from every quarter —
my death-plunge
in a flash, it’s certain now!
Three, four times blessed, my friends-in-arms
who died on the plains of Troy those years ago,
340 serving the sons of Atreus to the end. Would to god
I’d died there too and met my fate that day the Trojans,
swarms of them, hurled at me with bronze spears,
fighting over the corpse of proud Achilles!
A hero’s funeral then, my glory spread by comrades —
now what a wretched death I’m doomed to die!”
At that a massive wave came crashing down on his head,
a terrific onslaught spinning his craft round and round —
he was thrown clear of the decks —
the steering-oar wrenched
from his grasp —
and in one lightning attack the brawling
350 galewinds struck full-force, snapping the mast mid-shaft
and hurling the sail and sailyard far across the sea.
He went under a good long while, no fast way out,
no struggling up from under the giant wave’s assault,
his clothing dragged him down —divine Calypso’s gifts —
but at last he fought his way to the surface spewing
bitter brine, streams of it pouring down his head.
But half-drowned as he was, he’d not forget his craft —
he lunged after her through the breakers, laying hold
and huddling amidships, fled the stroke of death.
360 Pell-mell the rollers tossed her along down-current,
wild as the North Wind tossing thistle along the fields
at high harvest —dry stalks clutching each other tightly —
so the galewinds tumbled her down the sea, this way, that way,
now the South Wind flinging her over to North to sport with,
now the East Wind giving her up to West to harry on and on.
366 But someone saw him —Cadmus’ daughter with lovely ankles,
367 Ino, a mortal woman once with human voice and called
368 Leucothea now she lives in the sea’s salt depths,
esteemed by all the gods as she deserves.
370 She pitied Odysseus, tossed, tormented so —
she broke from the waves like a shearwater on the wing,
lit on the wreck and asked him kindly, “Ah poor man,
373 why is the god of earthquakes so dead set against you?
Strewing your way with such a crop of troubles!
But he can’t destroy you, not for all his anger.
Just do as I say. You seem no fool to me.
Strip off those clothes and leave your craft
for the winds to hurl, and swim for it now, you must,
strike out with your arms for landfall there,
380 Phaeacian land where destined safety waits.
Here, take this scarf,
tie it around your waist —it is immortal.
Nothing to fear now, neither pain nor death.
But once you grasp the mainland with your hands
untie it quickly, throw it into the wine-dark sea,
far from the shore, but you, you turn your head away!”
With that the goddess handed him the scarf
and slipped back in the heavy breaking seas
like a shearwater once again
390 and a dark heaving billow closed above her.
But battle-weary Odysseus weighed two courses,
deeply torn, probing his fighting spirit: “Oh no —
I fear another immortal weaves a snare to trap me,
urging me to abandon ship! I won’t. Not yet.
That shore’s too far away —
I glimpsed it myself —where she says refuge waits.
No, here’s what I’ll do, it’s what seems best to me.
As long as the timbers cling and joints stand fast,
I’ll hold out aboard her and take a whipping —
400 once the breakers smash my craft to pieces,
then I’ll swim —no better plan for now.”
But just as great Odysseus thrashed things out,
Poseidon god of the earthquake launched a colossal wave,
terrible, murderous, arching over him, pounding down on him,
hard as a windstorm blasting piles of dry parched chaff,
scattering flying husks —so the long planks of his boat
were scattered far and wide. But Odysseus leapt aboard
one timber and riding it like a plunging racehorse
stripped away his clothes, divine Calypso’s gifts,
410 and quickly tying the scarf around his waist
he dove headfirst in the sea,
stretched his arms and stroked for life itself.
But again the mighty god of earthquakes spied him,
shook his head and grumbled deep in his spirit, “Go, go,
after all you’ve suffered —rove your miles of sea —
till you fall in the arms of people loved by Zeus.
Even so I can hardly think you’ll find
your punishments too light!”
With that threat
he lashed his team with their long flowing manes,
420 gaining Aegae port where his famous palace stands.
But Zeus’s daughter Athena countered him at once.
The rest of the winds she stopped right in their tracks,
commanding them all to hush now, go to sleep.
All but the boisterous North —she whipped him up
and the goddess beat the breakers flat before Odysseus,
dear to Zeus, so he could reach the Phaeacians,
mingle with men who love their long oars
and escape his death at last.
Yes, but now,
adrift on the heaving swells two nights, two days —
430 quite lost —again and again the man foresaw his death.
Then when Dawn with her lovely locks brought on
the third day, the wind fell in an instant,
all glazed to a dead calm, and Odysseus,
scanning sharply, raised high by a groundswell,
looked up and saw it —landfall, just ahead.
Joy . . . warm as the joy that children feel
when they see their father’s life dawn again,
one who’s lain on a sickbed racked with torment,
wasting away, slowly, under some angry power’s onslaught —
440 then what joy when the gods deliver him from his pains!
So warm, Odysseus’ joy when he saw that shore, those trees,
as he swam on, anxious to plant his feet on solid ground again.
But just offshore, as far as a man’s shout can carry,
he caught the boom of a heavy surf on jagged reefs —
roaring breakers crashing down on an ironbound coast,
exploding in fury —
the whole sea shrouded —
sheets of spray —
no harbors to hold ships, no roadstead where they’d ride,
nothing but jutting headlands, riptooth reefs, cliffs.
Odysseus’ knees quaked and the heart inside him sank;
450 he spoke to his fighting spirit, desperate: “Worse and worse!
Now that Zeus has granted a glimpse of land beyond my hopes,
now I’ve crossed this waste of water, the end in sight,
there’s no way out of the boiling surf —I see no way!
Rugged reefs offshore, around them breakers roaring,
above them a smooth rock face, rising steeply, look,
and the surge too deep inshore, no spot to stand
on my own two legs and battle free of death.
If I clamber out, some big comber will hoist me,
dash me against that cliff —my struggles all a waste!
460 If I keep on swimming down the coast, trying to find
a seabeach shelving against the waves, a sheltered cove —
back to the fish-infested sea, retching in despair.
Or a dark power will loose some monster at me,
rearing out of the waves —one of the thousands
Amphitrite’s breakers teem with. Well I know
467 the famous god of earthquakes hates my very name!”
Just as that fear went churning through his mind
a tremendous roller swept him toward the rocky coast
470 where he’d have been flayed alive, his bones crushed
if the bright-eyed goddess Pallas had not inspired him now.
He lunged for a reef, he seized it with both hands and clung
for dear life, groaning until the giant wave surged past
and so he escaped its force, but the breaker’s backwash
charged into him full fury and hurled him out to sea.
Like pebbles stuck in the suckers of some octopus
dragged from its lair —so strips of skin torn
from his clawing hands stuck to the rock face.
A heavy sea covered him over, then and there
480 unlucky Odysseus would have met his death —
against the will of Fate —
but the bright-eyed one inspired him yet again.
Fighting out from the breakers pounding toward the coast,
out of danger he swam on, scanning the land, trying to find
a seabeach shelving against the waves, a sheltered cove,
and stroking hard he came abreast of a river’s mouth,
running calmly, the perfect spot, he thought . . .
free of rocks, with a windbreak from the gales.
As the current flowed he felt the river’s god and
490 prayed to him in spirit: “Hear me, lord, whoever you are,
I’ve come to you, the answer to all my prayers —
rescue me from the sea, the Sea-lord’s curse!
Even immortal gods will show a man respect,
whatever wanderer seeks their help —like me —
I throw myself on your mercy, on your current now —
I have suffered greatly. Pity me, lord,
your suppliant cries for help!”
So the man prayed
and the god stemmed his current, held his surge at once
and smoothing out the swells before Odysseus now,
500 drew him safe to shore at the river’s mouth.
His knees buckled, massive arms fell limp,
the sea had beaten down his striving heart.
His whole body swollen, brine aplenty gushing
out of his mouth and nostrils —breathless, speechless,
The Odyssey(Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) Page 19