These butchers that dyed the whole Aegean’s basin.
ODYSSEUS
And this ring.
PENELOPE
That no tinkling ablutions can clean?
ODYSSEUS
Thanks.
PENELOPE
That are an obscene example to my son?
TELEMACHUS
No!
PENELOPE
To make this a second Troy! When will men learn?
ODYSSEUS
Bring in that kitchen maid!
(EURYCLEIA leads in MELANTHO.)
Girl, you’re going to be hanged.
PENELOPE
Hanged?
ODYSSEUS
For insolence.
(To MELANTHO)
Remember our kitchen-talk?
PENELOPE
That’s just her nature, poor thing.
ODYSSEUS
Then she can’t be changed.
(EURYCLEIA protects MELANTHO.)
EURYCLEIA
She squinge up like a mouse under a floating hawk.
ODYSSEUS
Let her go.
PENELOPE
No! There’ll be no hanging in this house!
EURYCLEIA
Say you sorry, lickle mouse. Beg. Apologize.
(PENELOPE protects MELANTHO.)
PENELOPE
Let the hawk fall! Let him hoist me too in his claws.
ODYSSEUS
She’ll hang!
PENELOPE
Hook us up to heaven with his justice.
EURYCLEIA
Madame, is him!
PENELOPE
No. God. A hawk is God’s image.
ODYSSEUS
I’m not a god. I’m Odysseus.
PENELOPE
An odd Zeus.
ODYSSEUS
Let them learn not to be monstrous to those in rags.
PENELOPE
Will somebody throw this beggar out of my house?
EURYCLEIA
No.
PENELOPE
He saw me unstitch the shroud for Laertes.
TELEMACHUS
But the bow, Mother!
PENELOPE
He learnt from the suitor’s tries.
TELEMACHUS (To ODYSSEUS)
And the tears that scoured your face?
ODYSSEUS
A false father’s.
PENELOPE
He’s cunning with intimacies and quick with tears.
(ODYSSEUS approaches EUMAEUS.)
ODYSSEUS
We planted an oak seed. Tell her what it now says.
EUMAEUS
Its leaves insist: ‘Odysseus, Odysseus’.
PENELOPE
Leaves lie.
TELEMACHUS
He pulled the bow.
PENELOPE
Then you helped him kill the suitors.
EURYMACHUS
The scar, then?
PENELOPE
A story he got from Eumaeus.
TELEMACHUS
Are you that heartless? To enact a father’s love?
PENELOPE
No. It’s him. Let’s move our bed, Odysseus.
EURYCLEIA
Go. You hear what she ask.
ODYSSEUS
Like her bed, I cannot move.
PENELOPE
Tell me why, please?
ODYSSEUS
Our bed is rooted. Its base is an olive tree’s.
PENELOPE
Oh God! I’ll wash your hands with these tears, Odysseus.
(They embrace.)
ODYSSEUS
O when this racked body slid down astounding seas …
PENELOPE
When I’d kneel down like an olive, rooted in prayer …
ODYSSEUS
When the spray blinded me, till I lost faith in tears …
PENELOPE
When no sail startled the olive tree, year by year.
ODYSSEUS
The sea still shakes in my body, can you hear it?
PENELOPE
The sea is quiet and all your trials are done.
ODYSSEUS
Keep me embayed in your arms, your harbouring heart.
PENELOPE
Take root, my pine, my shade, my patience’s pardon.
ODYSSEUS
Has the sea made me this ruin you can’t recognize?
PENELOPE
Yes. Trials have hardened your face and hollowed mine.
ODYSSEUS
Shall I turn it away?
(He turns his head.)
PENELOPE
No.
(She turns his face to her.)
ODYSSEUS
Drown me in those eyes.
PENELOPE
They have shadows now. The sorrows of a woman.
ODYSSEUS
Girl …
PENELOPE
They tried to strangle love like a fowler, but …
ODYSSEUS
I prayed that they wouldn’t, my dove, my peace, my mind.
PENELOPE
She fluttered. She played dead, but her warm heart still beat.
ODYSSEUS
And that sea beat me with everything it could find.
EURYCLEIA
I’ll dip cored sponges in water and soothe your eyes.
EUMAEUS
I’ll bring the news to your father in the wild hills.
PENELOPE
I’ll oil your brown limbs like the bow, Odysseus.
TELEMACHUS
I’ll hear Athena’s joy when a swallow trills.
(ANTICLEA enters.)
ANTICLEA
Wasn’t this the promise I made you, Odysseus,
Passing their honeycombed caves, Aeaea, Samos, Crete,
Where the drawn shale hisses like a foam of bees, as
A breeze polishes the sea with Athena’s feet?
That in an oak’s crooked shade you would take your ease,
Quiet as a statue, with a stone bench for your plinth,
That here in this orchard is where you would end your days,
With memories as sweet as the honeycomb’s labyrinth?
As the white sprays of lilac fall on your shoulders,
As the scythes of mowers are oars circling through grass,
Now your heart heaves, not from the Cyclops’ boulders
But that your mother’s prophecy should come to pass?
(ATHENA enters.)
ATHENA
When quick foam laurels the forehead of drowned Ajax,
When nets of light on the sea snare Agamemnon,
When the shield of Achilles joins the spears on their racks,
The harbour of home is what your wanderings mean.
Isn’t this the surf of blossoms I promised you, Odysseus?
That peace which, in shafts of light, the gods allow men?
PENELOPE
Will you miss the sea?
ODYSSEUS
Grottoes where mackerel steer.
PENELOPE
Will you?
ODYSSEUS
Turtles paddling the shields of their shells.
PENELOPE
All benign wonders.
ODYSSEUS
Yes.
PENELOPE
Were there strange things out there?
ODYSSEUS
Monsters, God pity us.
PENELOPE
Why?
ODYSSEUS
We make them ourselves.
(Sound of the sea. BILLY BLUE enters.)
ATHENA (Sings)
String the bow of this harbour tight with your blind hands,
Aim the swallow’s arrow from our promontories,
Pluck the sea’s wires, poet, till the blue islands
Sing what you heard and saw through your bleached eyes.
(Music.)
BILLY BLUE (Sings)
I sang of that man against whom the sea still rages,
Who escaped its terrors, that despair could not destr
oy,
Since that first blind singer, others will sing down the ages
Of the heart in its harbour, then long years after Troy, after Troy.
And a house, happy for good, from a swallow’s omen,
Let the trees clap their hands, and the surf whisper amen.
For a rock, a rock, a rock, a rock-steady woman
Let the waves clap their hands and the surf whisper amen.
For that peace which, in their mercy, the gods allow men.
(Fade. Sound of surf.)
ALSO BY DEREK WALCOTT
POEMS
Selected Poems
The Gulf
Another Life
Sea Grapes
The Star-Apple Kingdom
The Fortunate Traveller
Midsummer
Collected Poems: 1948–1984
The Arkansas Testament
Omeros
PLAYS
Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays
The Joker of Seville and O Babylon!
Remembrance and Pantomime
Three Plays: The Last Carnival;
Beef, No Chicken; A Branch of the Blue Nile
Copyright © 1993 by Derek Walcott
All rights reserved
Published simultaneously in Canada by HarperCollinsCanadaLtd
First edition, 1993
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eISBN 9781466880382
First eBook edition: August 2014
CAUTION: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that the play by Derek Walcott in this book is fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States, the British Empire including the Dominion of Canada, and all other countries of the Copyright Union, and is subject to royalty. All rights, including professional, amateur, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio and television broadcasting, and the rights of translation into foreign languages, are strictly reserved. Particular emphasis is laid on the question of readings, permission for which must be obtained in writing from the author’s agent. All inquiries should be addressed to the author’s representative, Howard Rosenstone, Rosenstone/Wender, 3 East 48 Street, New York, New York 10017
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