But when Laertes heard her, he stared and bit his tongue,
then with numb fingers grasped the nurse and held her back.
Now on the blossomed trees a drizzling shower fell,
flowers grew dim and the earth odorous, cuckoo birds
perched on the olive boughs and shook their watery wings. 545
Bending his head, the old man smelled the steaming sod;
his brains, like mud-balls in a sudden shower, crumbled,
and sluggish oxen in his mind began to plow.
He held the plowshare tightly, his feet sank in furrows,
and skylarks, swallows, storks and cranes flew low and cried: 550
“Grandfather, plow the loam, open the earth to feed us!”
He heard and prod the beasts until his entrails burst
like earth, and birds flew back and forth and ate of him.
Such were the joys and memories that now brimmed his mind,
and slowly stuttering, back and forth he swung his arms 555
in a wide sweep, like a good farmer who sows his seed,
and his old nurse, guessing the plowman’s secret wish,
poured grain into her kerchief from a storage jar
and spilled it in her dreaming master’s lap, and he,
feeling the holy seed within his trembling palms, 560
took on new vigor, smiled in silence, and stood erect.
Earth softened in the drizzling rain, and from deep pits
of moldering soft manure came odors of plowed fields.
The old man swayed and staggered as he raised his hands
to cast the fruitful seed in earth, but tripped and fell, 565
then on his belly dragged himself on shaking knees
and sowed with open arms, as though he blessed the seed,
but fell face forward, raised himself, clawed at the ground,
and fell again, until his beard was caked with mud.
Pecking the earth, the sparrows zoned him happily, 570
the old crow came and hopped upon his master’s back,
and his white hounds preceded him in the thin rain.
Then all at once the rainbow sank its feet in grass
and hung in mid-air, blazing bright with sweetest joy;
heaven and earth were bridged, and the slow drizzle ceased, 575
But the old man, engrossed in sowing, ignored the sky,
struggled to cast his last fistful, but fell face down,
and his head thrust into the rain-soaked soil like final seed.
When the long-suffering man heard of his father’s death
he felt his entrails pull apart and fall to earth 580
as if a huge part of his famous bronze-hewn body
had rotted suddenly and dropped in an open grave.
Holding his father’s still warm body in his arms,
he mounted toward their moldering, old ancestral tombs,
slew oxen on the grave and sent them down to Hades 585
so that his father’s ghost might plow the shades, sow deep,
and glean Elysian wheat with his dead, reedy hands;
He placed a sharp goad by his father’s side, a scythe,
a bronze jar of cool water, a warm loaf of bread,
then last of all he masked his father’s holy face 590
with pure gold leaf, marked out his lashless eyes, his mouth,
his thorny eyebrows, long mustaches, cheeks and chin,
and bending over the tomb cried thrice his father’s name,
but it went lost, and no loved echo rose from earth.
Odysseus smoothed the grave’s light soil and planted there, 595
to suck and drain his father’s flesh, an olive sprout
under whose shade in time grandsons might come to play.
The fruit rots blessed in earth, for it has cast its seed,
and that same night Odysseus ordered a swift ship
full-armed with crimson sails, loaded with amphoras 600
of old rich wine, with wheat, with copper kegs of honey,
a marriage god nailed to the prow for figurehead
holding the mystic, many-seeded pomegranate. 603
He summoned two town elders and his lustrous bard:
“My castle’s worthy chiefs, go as my marriage brokers 605
due north to a deep-gardened and green-wooded isle.
With vine leaves on your heads, with your tall staffs in hand,
ascend with pomp the wealthy palace, pass the threshold,
and bending low before the old king, hail him thus:
‘Greetings! Our king, the famous castle-battler, sends us. 610
We bring a dowry-ship of honey, wheat, and wine,
the rich gifts of our master’s son, to take for bride,
with your permission, Sire, your daughter nobly bred.
Since that dawn when our master saw her play on shore
he longed for her to rule his home and breed him grandsons.’ ” 615
He spoke; at once his words became a laden ship,
and the three marriage brokers sailed and searched their brains
to find what artful words might bring the wished agreement.
Odysseus stood upon the shore and watched the ship
scudding ahead, its red sails filled with the South Wind 620
Watching his son before him run to find a bride,
feeling his father’s body rot in the grave behind him,
and he at the dead center, bridegroom both and corpse,
he shuddered, for his life now seemed the briefest lightning flash.
He turned and looked about him: all his streets seemed narrow, 625
strange generations trod the roads, new boys and girls
seeded when he was flinging spears on foreign shores;
his isle had bloomed and borne fruit like a tree in season.
The sun had set but on the mountains dragged its light
slowly, as though it had no wish to leave the earth. 630
Sitting on low stone walls, old men of the first rank,
their chins upon their staffs, chattered in low tones,
weighing each word with prudent craft before they cast it,
flinging each other hints, hiding their secret thoughts.
Yet but one secret thought pierced through the elders’ hearts, 635
and though it burned their lips, could find no passage out.
They suddenly ceased like crickets when man’s shadow falls,
for far away in twilight they discerned their king
pacing with lion strides, nearing the plane-tree grove,
till he approached and stood before their shriveled forms 640
and all bowed low with great esteem and wished him well.
The sea-wolf looked with scorn on his town’s elder chiefs
and thrust their rotting forms aside, struggling to find
their manly bodies that on earth once prowled like lions,
how sagging now, as though earth clutched and dragged them down! 645
Odysseus grabbed an old sea-churl with battered ears:
“Ah, famed man-slaying pirate of storm-battered seas,
remember how your native harbor laughed and flashed
when you returned and piled your loot high on the quays?
Once in my early youth I watched in admiration 650
how you trod groaning earth as you flung out at me:
Tour earth is narrow, prince, your quays can’t hold me now,
I shall enthrone myself amid rich ships in ambush!’
You spoke, and suddenly in my heart my land grew small,
but now, for shame, you lick earth’s filth like a dung-beetle!” 655
The codger glanced with spite on his king’s jeering mouth:
“When I was young I spurned all shores and gleaned the waves,
but in mid-sea I’d raise a shout that stopped my ships:
Ah for cool water from my well, fr
uit from my trees!
Dear God, had I my woman now upon my knee!’ ” 660
The foxy-minded man then laughed till the earth shook:
“Strange fruits are sweetest and strange breasts smell best of all!
O rotting hull, my native land, you rise and fall
between my brows and break on the mind’s jagged cliffs!”
He poked his neighbor and heaped the sea-wolf with scorn: 665
“This man once rivaled me in cunning wiles, his mind
turned to a small, white fox when he tread whitest snow,
turned to a yellow-crimson hare on sun-hot sand,
an emerald locust lost amid the greenest grass;
and when he rose in council, all our giddy thoughts 670
would fall in his words’ lovely snares like partridges:
now he chews pumpkin seed and plucks his hair of fleas!”
But then the old fox curled his lips and bared his teeth:
“Aye, king, beasts of the wood grow old, and gods grow old,
and old age with its cares strikes even the soul of man; 675
you, too, will pay the price, whether you will or not!”
The man of stone heart laughed with spite and the men quaked:
“Learn that the soul sprouts twice with youthful fruit and flower
from rooted, ancient trees, nor pays the slavish tithe;
no matter how old I grow, I’ll fight toward youth renewed!” 680
He spoke, and to his left seized a distinguished chief
with gleaming flesh and five-fold fat, with curled white locks
who pursed his painted lips in girlish coquetry.
Odysseus looked him up and down with scorn, then spoke:
“Behind your fat make-up I still make out your mug: 685
you are that famous bard who one warm evening sang
so well amid our feast that my great father rose
and pinned upon your warbling chest a golden cricket.
That sacred cricket now is dead—behold its husk!
By God, now in this twilight’s murky glow you seem 690
like a bald peacock plucked by scurf to an old hen,
or like a shameless fat-assed goddess smeared with grease
who, naked on the crossroads, spreads her thighs for hire.”
The lickerish old man with a coy wink replied:
“My king, here is a proverb said of two-faced life: 695
It’s good to change at times from male to female hare.’ ”
The old men plucked their chins and giggled in their beards,
but sorrow crushed the manly chest of the world-traveler
for he recalled how when waves tore his prow he longed
to reach his rocky isle and to hold council here 700
under this plane-tree grove with his town elders round him—
was this, by God, the foul fistful his soul desired?
For a long time he watched them with a mute compassion
and they took courage from his silence and soon began
to speak their minds and give him prudent, sound advice: 705
“Aye, king, your eyes, ears, fists are surely sated now.
They say you’ve plundered cities, crossed far-distant seas,
fought with great gods and slept with goddesses in caves,
even that you flew to heaven and plunged down to Hades
Words swiftly flew in flocks over our isle like birds 710
in spring and fall, bringing us news of your great deeds;
don’t vanish now, your soul has done all it has wished,
but beach your idle ship upon your sands at last.
The risks of youth are good, but when time’s firm foundations
steady a man at length, it’s time he put to port; 715
boundaries are sacred: woe to the mind that crowds them close!”
But the sea-battler rose and left without a word;
his feet, like a wild beast’s, tread softly rock on rock
until he took the stone-paved path to his high castle.
The elders locked their minds, leant on their staffs once more 720
and gabbed about their vineyards, their new-planted greens,
to chase away their master’s ponderous and crushing shade.
Many the silver moons that rose and fell and played
in changing skies like round full suns or slender scythes.
Grapes in the vineyards reddened, stalks of wheat grew golden, 725
ripe figs at noon dripped with sweet honey on the earth,
heat swelled, young girls grew pale, their armpits smelled of musk,
and the mind-spinner held time in his salty hands
like fruit, like pomegranates or green grapes, and waited.
He stood by his bronze gate and listened to the sea 730
as in his mind his vessel leapt like shoals of fish;
his wretched wife urged all her frightened slaves to sing
their sweetest songs and drown the roar of beckoning seas,
but he already stood by sails and watched the waves;
his feasting boards were spread with air, sea, birds, and sounds. 735
One day close by the shore he stood near a poor hut
with swelling osiers, oleanders, low stone walls,
and a worm-eaten hull that, flat on sand, was now
a washing tub where an old woman scrubbed her clothes.
But the ship’s figurehead still stood upon the sand, 740
leprous and mangled, breast and throat devoured and maimed;
only its dark blue eyes were cool and deathless still,
gazing on seas with rapture still, longing to leave.
Here Captain Clam, a shaggy, battered old sea-wolf
sat with his grandchild on the shore and chewed his lunch. 745
“Good hour, Captain Clam, I’m thirsty for cool water;
rise up, and may your famous hands refresh me now.”
The ancient sailor wiped his hanging white mustache
then washed his hands at the sea’s edge, welcomed his king,
and, smiling, brought a bowl of cool, refreshing water. 750
Then the two old sea-eagles squatted on the sand,
and the archer placed his palm on the old boatman’s back:
“Aye, Captain Clam, how glad I am to touch your body!
I bring to mind your daring deeds on sea and land:
what shame that such a body now should waste away. 755
By God, let’s kick our flagship in the sea, old friend,
until the sails stretch taut and our minds fill with brine!
Ahoy! new voyages rise in my heart once more!
You’ve only one life, Captain Clam; don’t let it rot.
All others age and slump, but we’ll mount upward still! 760
Leave women and your grandchild now and come with me.”
Crouched on the sand, old Captain Clam began to growl
like a ship’s dog just freed from his confining leash.
His steady and sun-battered head with its gray hair
flooded with waves and thundered like a seagull’s cave, 765
but he said nothing as he watched his grandchild play,
then gazed far off and deeply breathed the sea’s wild spume.
The great soul-snatcher softened his. harsh voice and spoke
as when a lover wishes to persuade his loved one,
and then he rose and took his way along the beach, 770
but from the corner of his eye he saw the boatman
plodding within his footsteps down the sandy shore.
The cunning rogue then laughed and sighed, rejoiced, and thought:
“The soul is like a woman who not even can not,
but will not resist warm words that lure her like a man.” 775
He leant next evening slyly by the bronzesmith’s door
and marveled at the red-haired smith, the savage stranger
/> who stooped and struggled by the flames, a soot-smirched god
come down from the high mountain tops and their dense woods,
crude in his speech, his fair locks flowing down his back, 780
with neither wife nor child, a heavy and secluded wolf.
A stain spread on his right cheek like an octopus,
for in her pregnancy his mother had seen flames
and burning castles shining on her blazing son.
Odysseus gazed with wonder on that hulking body, 785
and when he’d had his fill, his harsh voice mocked and jeered:
“Hey, Hardihood, you’ve a firm back and breast and arms,
but it’s a shame, I say, that you still deign to battle
with unresisting bronze, that gummy, waxen god.
Know that a newborn god now leaps and shouts in flames!” 790
The red stain on the bronzesmith turned to blue, his breast
throbbed, but he knew the wanderer’s words, though harsh, were true.
Odysseus crossed the soot-black threshold then and thought:
“I’d like to have this blond beast for my traveling comrade.”
He closed the door, and when both stood before the fire, 795
out of his heavy belt he drew a glittering sword.
made of the purest iron, blue-black and double-edged.
The bronzesmith leapt and rushed to touch the dread new god,
but the fox-minded man stopped him with outstretched hand:
“One night, walking along a barbarous coast alone, 800
I mounted toward a temple perched on some high rocks
and broke the door down till the walls thundered and groaned,
and as I groped in darkness my hands fell with greed
on a new god who wore this iron thrust through his belt,
and then I heard the almighty one sob chokingly. 805
But my heart, overbrimmed with tears of men and gods,
no longer feared what secret cries might come from darkness,
and I flung out my hand unfearing, ripped the belt,
and thus the god’s sword passed into my mortal hands.”
The proud thief spoke no more, but in the flaming blaze 810
he grasped the bronzesmith by his lion’s mane and showed,
upon the sword’s black hilt engraved, the new god’s sign:
a cross with grasping hooks that whirled like a swift wheel.
The bronzesmith’s chest became a bellows, and he roared:
“Oho! What shame to live like moles, far from the light!” 815
He spoke, dashed down his leathern apron to the ground,
then thrashed about with open arms as though he choked.
Odysseus smiled, contented, for his iron hooks
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