The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel
Page 84
The dead rose from their graves on distant shores, and fought;
fair women rose within their caves, unbound their hair,
and their small breasts leapt like twin flaming lion cubs.
Fond memory with her curly belly rose from waves
like a much-traveled leprous mermaid at the prow 640
and beckoned with salt-eaten hands for a long time.
The lone man laughed, but when the sentry in his head
leapt up, desire vanished like fine azure smoke;
he kicked the earth and called upon his first forebear:
“Aye, great forefather, bottomless heart, O hopeless need, 645
climb up on earth, look proudly on your freed grandson.
We’re saved, we have no castle now, we have no tent,
our soul has not a place to stand, the heart is pierced
and drained, nor does the mind know where to lay its head.
Ah, grandsire, I’ve surpassed your pride: you thirst because 650
you’ve never drunk, hunger because you’ve never eaten,
but hunger itself has sated me and thirst unslaked me.”
He spoke, then once more turned his black eyes inwardly
until his head began to rise and swell like yeasted bread.
In dark or flaming flashes, days and nights passed by, 655
his old life like a rotted hull sank in his eyes
and his stout body writhed to change its withered flesh;
even the stones groaned “Ah!” and “Ah!” and strove to blossom.
The bright arena in his head spread far and wide,
and his thoughts widened, spilled, and flooded all the fields; 660
in his mind’s furrows, towns were sown and sprang like nude
tall women who with bites and kisses, fears and tears,
surrendered wholly to a man’s caressing hands.
Men rose up swiftly on the earth like swarms of ants,
labored and laughed, wept, kissed, then once again plunged down 665
swiftly into the earth and sowed their heads in furrows.
All, in earth’s brief green lightning flash, run toward the grave.
Our faces dart like wings and gleam in the bright sun,
mothers most gently watch their daughters raise their necks
and try to see their sons behind a man’s broad back. 670
All without pity fix their bright eyes straight ahead 671
and run to catch the sweet red apple of the world,
but the pit suddenly yawns and the holy apple falls. 673
Man rises from the soil like the luxuriant grass
then sinks in soil once more like grass, and earth grows fat 675
munching with greedy haste her children’s well-fed corpses.
We sail upon a roaring, black, tempestuous sea,
and we’ve entrusted, lads, our parents and our sons
to a small flimsy walnut-shell that sinks us all!
The waves are thick black drops of blood which loom and fall, 680
foam glitters on their crests a moment, then disappears,
only the sound of slashed and gurgling throats is heard.
The great ascetic cocked his ears and stooped to hear
a buzzing whir that rose from soils black, white, and red.
Earth spread around him, an enormous threshing floor, 685
where men like nude worms crawled and worked their greedy jaws
while he leant over them and slowly fed them full:
“Eat on,” he thought, “eat on, pass through your cycle, worms,
then sprout with wings like souls to free yourselves, and flee!”
He clasped life like a maid and tenderly caressed her, 690
he held earth’s children to his breast and gave them suck,
he laughed and wailed like a small infant in its cradle,
he was earth’s father, mother, son, and her beloved.
When the sun rose, the gates of mankind opened wide,
crews swarmed upon their ships and workers filled the fields; 695
when the sun sank, the gates of mankind shut down tight
and human brains sank in the Tartarus of their dreams;
his bare breast shut and opened like swift silent gates.
A maiden sat by her broad loom and sped her shuttle;
fragrance of curly basil filled her window sill, 700
cool water-jugs stood in their niches, towels hung
on walls, and her black-kerchiefed mother scanned the fields
for herbs, but the maid stayed at home and sped her shuttle
because grief for a shepherd boy gnawed at her heart.
The speeding whistling of the reel, the pedal’s beat, 705
the slender maiden’s song, passed by far fields and streams
and struck tall men in taverns, lads on distant farms,
then struck a rustic shepherd boy who played his flute:
“Dear God, was that the nightingale? Did the world sigh?
Or did the maiden raise her throat to sing of love?” 710
Then the young shepherd turned, looked at the window sill,
looked at the curly basil, and his heart caught fire;
the great ascetic also turned to look, and smiled,
for the slim warbling maid, the youth who played his flute,
nestled within his mind like two twin-pitted almonds. 715
But soon he frowned severely and bit his lips. Black news!
Dread war broke out, doors clanged, and married couples clasped
each other tight as though they’d never part; far off
bronze weapons glittered on the mountains, fields turned red,
Death sat enthroned on his black steed and from his head 720
thick blood dripped down and plucked-out hair and gouged-out eyes.
Night fell and the full pallid moon rose in the sky,
the wounded groaned amid the fragrance of cut hay,
black buzzards heard them, swooped and ate, and the groans ceased.
Slowly in the moon’s sweetness the mind-archer’s brows 725
and his tempestuous eyebrows straightened and grew calm.
In his right hand he held a city high that burst
like pomegranates filled with seed, or a sweet beehive;
his head turned right, and the whole city, too, turned right,
his head turned left, and the whole city, too, turned left, 730
he shouted “I!” to himself and the whole city yelled
as though it now first felt it lived and had a soul.
Odysseus brimmed with warriors, lovers, women, lands,
and armies, castles, women, men, brimmed with Odysseus.
The archer walked the cliffs of his precipitous mind, 735
and Negro heralds rose and stalked among the glens:
“A great ascetic has come and sanctifies our forests!
Forward, let all with bodily pains, the deaf, the blind,
the halt, come with their brimming gifts! All shall be cured!
Let those whose souls hide secret sins come with their crimes, 740
let them confess them to his grace, and their pains will scatter.
The holy herb comes dear, my lads—first come, first healed!”
Such glad news shook the country like an earthquake’s blast,
the straw huts trembled with the clash and bang of doors,
cripples hopped down the roads, the sterile women screamed, 745
some tried hard to withstand the spell and clung to trees,
but a bewitching power drew them and they stumbled on
like drunkards sucked down in the great ascetic’s gyre.
Snakes slithered close and sunned themselves on his stone knees,
snails strung themselves in slimy neckrings round his throat, 750
a pair of swallows by mistake built their first nest
within his tangled thorny hair, and all l
ife twined
like a wild honeysuckle round his star-scorched body.
As the days passed and pilgrims came with gifts in hand
and fell down prostrate at his feet, the deep dark eyes, 755
the black wells of the mute ascetic swallowed all.
The first to come was an obese and grease-smeared whore
whose savage nails and crinkly hair dripped fragrant musk.
A black, flame-scorched wild pear tree raised its sooty arms
like a maimed maiden above the ascetic’s reverent head, 760
and there on a dry branch the whore, with twitching ass,
hung a gold heart for votive gift, and hoarsely cried:
“O great ascetic, pity me! Last night I found
the first white cursèd hair among my crow-black locks;
ah, raise your hand, chase it away, or it will wreck me!” 765
The brooding lone man gazed on her, earth gently quaked,
and the fat startled whore tripped assward in the shade.
Next came a sighing hermit perched on green fir boughs,
a hunchbacked fistful, borne by two stooped men who fetched
and placed him gently at the archer’s placid feet. 770
The seedy hermit’s whining, wheedling voice was heard:
“Ah, my dear brother, God’s black blaze has burned me, too.
I’ve not known any joys, I’ve never yet touched woman,
I’ve never laughed, I’ve never traveled or got drunk,
that I might die full worthy of the immortal crown. 775
We’ll go to heaven together, brother, arm in arm!”
But the archer burst in laughter and with his hard heels
sent the poor hermit tumbling in the dirt and soot.
A king appeared then, wearing earrings of wrought gold,
followed by a great troop of men and chattering women 780
who in their black fists held thick lumps of kneaded mud
fetched from their yards and family graves, mixed thoroughly
with their salt tears, their murky sweat, and their warm blood.
These they heaped high about the ascetic’s holy feet
and the king bowed in worship in the bloodstained tracks: 785
“Ah, save my people! They bring their tears, their sweat, their blood
kneaded at night to dark dough with our sacred soil;
life is most heavy, death most heavy, the world’s a trap—
shape us a god that we might bear the wild waste’s road!”
The sun-mind placed a heavy hand on the black mud: 790
“I pity man, whom the great winds will sweep away;
what skills the wretch has thought of to withstand grim Death!”
he thought, and set his mind adrift on deep dark waters.
Meanwhile the trembling peasants hung their votive gifts
on the wild pear until the shriveled branches bloomed 795
with oxen of thin metal, and feet, hands, heads of clay.
The pilgrims’ stench reached to far-distant villages,
gardeners smelled the profits and set out and beached
on the lake’s sandy shore in boats piled high with food.
Tumblers and jugglers with their gear and monkey tricks, 800
minstrels with their resounding chords and lilting lyres
sniffed from afar and ran to grab whatever they could—
even a swig of wine or bite of meat would do!
The lone man gazed unmoving, then with feverish hands
grabbed the dark lumps of mud and warmed them in his palms; 805
he felt the futile efforts, the black bitter toil
of man’s dark fate on earth, and his heart swelled with grief;
at times he rang with laughter till the branches broke,
at times his tears swirled round him like a rainbow’s arch.
One dawn a whirlwind swept within his brimming heart, 810
his blood surged through his veins in cycles, his mind seethed,
and his arms spun like wheels to plunder the dark clay.
His hands could not keep up with his swift mind, the mud
whistled like flames with maddening faces, monstrous forms.
This was no longer mud or flame, no longer woman 815
who groaned beneath the pummeling, merged with the male mind—
thus in the first damp dark must God have seized the clay
and cast it full of fertile seed to shape a mother.
In the sun’s blaze, the ascetic dressed, undressed the earth,
his mind burned, his hands whirled, his body poured with sweat, 820
and his swift eyes were swept by wild intoxication;
thoughts dug deep furrows in his wide and flaming brows.
The herds of men crouched trembling, and at times discerned
huge monsters hurtling through the clay, or now and then
caught glimpses of dark bristling backs or bloodstained gaping jaws. 825
The wings of day sped by like flaming lightning bolts,
the lone man’s temples creaked, his thoughts spread far and wide,
his memory grew more savage, leapt on birds, seized beasts,
and as he barked and bellowed, sang and hissed on stones,
his mighty mind, that ancient river, rose from mud, 830
a guileless grandsire whose beard streamed through fields and farms.
The lone man smiled and felt a tickling as eggs hatched
within his bushy hair in spring and mothers chirped;
the fledgling swallows in the eaves of his white head
hopped but hung trembling, fearful of his plunging cliffs. 835
Shutting his eyes, he listened to his blood course deep,
and as Earth rose within his mind, he shook to see
an endless worm that thrashed its body in the sun;
Earth then recalled her sufferings, her deep memory swelled,
she looked back fiercely and relived the dreadful trek. 840
Cries scorched her as she stumbled in the desert, screaming,
but soon the conflagrations mellowed, her womb cooled,
rocks softly crumbled, and her bowels slowly yawned
and sprouted a moist quivering blade of greenest grass.
When the grass tasted light, it wailed like a small child 845
and called the world’s four nurses quick to suckle it:
first Mother Earth, then sun, then rain, then the air’s breasts.
The great ascetic plunged his eyes in inner wealth,
followed his entrails’ roots, bent down and then recalled
how arm in arm with Mother Earth he once had climbed 850
the dark ascent, passed flames, trees, beasts, until both took
from the mind’s tiny light-well one small drop of air.
Earth’s last-born son with sweetness opened his eyes wide,
the herds of men grew weary, their eyes glazed, and all
rolled huddling down to earth and merged with mud and dung. 855
Like the full silent moon who with great hauteur casts
her beams on sleeping earth, thus the sage man kept vigil
with mute, self-lighted head erect in the thick darkness.
One day at dawn a naked Negro boy crawled close;
his teeth gleamed by the cliff, his palms emitted musk, 860
he slid like a snake on his black belly and hissed on stones:
“Alas, your flesh is leprous now, your body is bone,
your shanks are cricket-thin, your belly is like a frog’s,
your bones hang down in splinters like an unroofed hut!
Even the still unbowed high castle of your head 865
rattles like a sapped beehive rotting in the rain.
Beetles have taken you for dung, and the horned owl
for an old hollow trunk; storks, grosbeaks, hoopoe, cranes
have plucked your white beard to its roots
to build their nests.
You’ve coughed all winter long, or like a turtle wheezed, 870
all summer long you’ve huddled on the stones and hissed,
and now you sit here hungry while your giddy mind
with eagle glance sees the unseen, grips in its claws
all souls, but cannot see that your great bow has crumbled.”
Then the mind-battler raged and bellowed like a beast, 875
but the black dwarf laughed loud and stretched his gleaming neck:
“What a great crime, lone man, that in your troubled cares
and pains you still can’t quell your pride and wrath.
You hold the sky and earth in your sharp claws, but still
you can’t choke down that most sweet, most great foe, the Archer!” 880
Hissing, the black snake flicked and thrust deep in the ground.
The proud ascetic’s face grew clouded with dark shame:
“This sharp seductive voice rose from the earth to mock me;
I see a final superhuman struggle shine
deep in my mind,” the lone man murmured sadly, drenched with sweat. 885
A cuckoo perched on a dry branch and scanned the fields,
and then before a cock could crow or the day smile,
within the lone man’s lightless bowels a huge eye
sprang like a sun and watched him, hopeless, calm, and stern,
till the mind-archer leapt and spoke with quaking fear: 890
“Who are you? When you look at me I feel ashamed!”
He heard a voice deep in the curved leaves of his heart:
“I am that eye, that vigilant beast that stalks your mind;
whether you will or not, I stalk you ruthlessly
in your salvation, vice, your shame, your gallant deeds.” 895
The lone man leapt with indignation, his mind flared:
“I’m made of spirit, fire, earth, and air, I rack
myself in these wild wastes, I want no eye to watch me!”
“But I don’t ask you. I mount your mind and gallop on!
It’s only I who live and rule—you’re but a toy, 900
a glowworm crawling on damp earth with fading light.”
“Who are you? My heart throbs and flutters painfully.”
“Do you still ask, lone man? We’ve lived together long.”
The sad yet mocking voice then faded from his heart.
O flaming Eye of tigress Life that shines in darkness! 905
Then the mind-traveled man leant on the wild pear’s trunk;
the pilgrims still lay, wearied, on the ground about him,
and in the shedding petals of dawn’s rose he saw
his whole life like a legend walk toward the bright sun.