But he stood still, for his cup suddenly brimmed with joy
to watch her whose laugh bloomed like almond trees, and said:
“My thousand-year-old memory plunges roots and twines 1150
my thick bones like wild ivy in a savage growth.
When I sit idle and serene, with tranquil heart,
then God seems like a dream or my mind’s misty shadow;
but when abruptly I get drunk with cares or wine
then memory rises in my heart like a dark beast 1155
and God mounts like a buffalo in my muddy guts.
This is the man who guides my black ship, Helen! Choose!”
The queen fell silent then, and though she frowned, she thought:
“Ah, I shall never escape alive from his cruel claws!”
Then for a lightning moment she wanted to cry out, 1160
to scream and wake her husband, the archons, the guards, the slaves.
Her soul cried out for help, but her heart felt ashamed
although she watched the lawless pirate with mute fear.
And as by a deep shore we watch an old town’s ruins
where silent fishes come and go and spawn in pits 1165
and waves laugh murmuring high above the castle doors,
so large-eyed Helen gazed into the pirate’s eyes
and saw her life entwined in poisonous green roots.
Cunning Odysseus felt her fear, laughed long, and mocked:
“Ah, I’ve a tough hide, Lady! I’m not at all like Paris, 1170
and you’ll not slip alive from these sharp claws of mine.
I give you leave: you still have time to shout for help!”
“Yes, I have time, but choose to follow my fate freely!”
The great abductor stood erect and his heart throbbed:
“O free soul, welcome to my ship a thousand times!” 1175
They spoke no more, and as they looked at open doors,
at courtyards, fragrant gardens, and bronze outer gates,
they took, in thought, the riverbank to the far sea
as the day broke and bodies flushed with flaming beards,
and comrades seized their oars and beat the sluggish waves. 1180
The guileless king woke in this noisy hush and said:
“I slept, and your sweet conversation lulled me softly
as though I heard seas breaking on far-distant strands
and pebbles gurgling on the seashore’s shingle there;
you spoke of visions, dreams, and distant voyages.” 1185
Then Helen arched her brows and rose to leave her throne,
but false Odysseus seized his poor friend in his arms
and his heart burst in shrill wails like a bell-hung lyre
so that a lump rose in the king’s throat, and he, too, wept.
And thus the two great kings clasped by the lapsing hearth 1190
and wailed till their eyes ran like gutters down their cheeks.
But then arch-eyebrowed Helen shot a spiteful word:
“How shameful for great warriors to lament like widows!
A thousand times you’ve tasted separation’s grief
with mortals and immortals in your crime-packed lives.” 1195
She spoke, and the kings disengaged themselves with shame,
and smiled, so that it seemed as if the rainbow’s arch
shone with its seven smiles of light on their thick lashes.
Then with no further word the two old friends parted forever.
Odysseus went to find. his soft bed and to sleep, 1200
but in the lamp’s dim light he glimpsed his splayfoot friend,
stark naked, sprawled near Rocky, whispering happily;
but both were unaware, their backs turned toward the door,
that their sly leader crouched and listened to all they said.
They had become fast friends, and the broad-shouldered man 1205
was telling his new comrade of the sea’s seductions:
“Don’t be so sad, my friend; I’ve no doubt earth is good,
but the sly giggling sea can snatch your wits away!
I, too, once plowed and sowed the earth; I, too, grazed sheep,
but when the waves burst on my chest—God curse them all— 1210
and my hands gripped the oars, then surely I went daft,
for then—I swear by wine!—I scorned earth like a mule!
For us the wind’s a shepherd, waves are sheep and goats,
our prow’s a pointed plow, we sow the empty air.
The sea’s a monstrous vineyard of unending harvest!” 1215
The shepherd listened to the blue sea’s sonorous myth
and once was swept like seagulls on the savage foam,
and once allured by the green-haired seductress, earth.
Then glutton laid his hands on his friend’s hill-born back:
“Three seas rage in me: women, wine, and a sea-captain; 1220
the wine’s a heavy beast, but heavier still is woman,
and a still heavier greedy beast is my sea-captain.
You know he’ll crunch you sure one day, dry bones and all;
and if you work for him, then let the world go hang,
let loose the wings of life and death on yawning cliffs!” 1225
The sea-enraptured man laughed low and then went on:
“One day I’ll show you, Rocky, when he stands in sun,
how many shadows his seven souls, his body casts;
he casts as many shadows as his crew of friends,
stands like an axle in our midst and twines us round.” 1230
Odysseus burst out coughing then and laughed with joy:
“Ho, what unswallowable lies, huge as your monstrous bulk!
Ah, Rocky, don’t believe him—I’ve one spirit only,
one body, one light shade for a brief while on earth.
I hunger, I thirst, and surely I shall die one day; 1235
meanwhile, I play, and keep my soul and body well.”
Big-bellied glutton-leapt and grabbed his master’s arms:
“By God, I get all twisted with what’s true or false!
When you’re before me, then I think you’re meat and bones,
chock-full of blood and tears, a mortal just like me; 1240
but when I see you from afar, in memory’s mist,
then you grow monstrous like a god, and I go daft!”
Odysseus then rejoiced to feel how his friend’s hands
licked at his brawny body like a lion’s tongue,
but when he’d had his fill, he moved off toward his bed: 1245
“It’s time, lads, to resign our bodies to calm sleep;
they’ve fed and overfed us in this wealthy place,
our flesh has brimmed with strength, our veins have overswelled,
and in the morning all this dammed up, aching strength
shall burst in difficult works and thus not go to waste; 1250
the day’s gone well, an apple tree with ripe fruit laden.”
The two mind-slaves without a single dream set sail
with crossed hands on night’s ancient sea, mother of sleep,
but the uncompassionate fisher hooked a mammoth shark:
deep in the dead of night, before the crack of dawn, 1255
the fearful patron of pure friendship, Zeus, came down
and stood with flashing flame before the archer’s bed.
He foamed with fury at the lips, his thunderbolts
twisted and turned like scorpions in his monstrous hands,
but the archer yelled: “Unhappy creature of our hearts, 1260
I pity your sad doom and harmless thunderbolts.
Should I but bend or move a little, or open my eyes,
poor orphaned child born of our fear, you’d fade in air!”
He spoke, then raised his lashes slightly, and the god vanished.
When day’s face in the light s
haft whitely shone at last, 1265
the wry, fox-minded man thus hailed it with a smile:
“The awesome ancient gods are now but poor bugbears
who roam with secret stealth the unguarded brain at night.
Welcome, O light, O sacred rooster of man’s awakening mind!”
He rose, belted his knife, then prodded with his foot 1270
the two bright bodies that still sailed in sleep close by:
“Get up, my lads, it’s daybreak, and a long road’s before us.”
The two shook from their heads the heavy foam of sleep,
looked at the light, leapt up and thrust knives in their belts,
their full hearts brimming with the abundant strength of night. 1275
Then their quick-witted leader portioned out each task:
“You, Kentaur, speed at once to the great stable stalls,
and to the finest chariot yoke the finest steeds,
for I know well how good you are at chariot-stealing!
Rocky, glide up the tower on tiptoe, then swoop down 1280
and kil the guards there stealthily, and make no noise.
Our minds and arms must make no errors this heavy day.”
He spoke, and the two pirates sped, each to his task,
while the light-footed archer prowled the zigzag palace.
The flames still dimly shone high in the brazen lamps 1285
and oily smells hung heavily in the blue-black halls.
He climbed the staircase softly to the women’s rooms
and smiled with cunning pride at his own shifting will,
for he was free, he knew, to change fast fortune’s wheel
at the last moment even, or stop at any stair, 1290
and as he joyed in his deep freedom step by step,
a monstrous shadow leapt in the lamp’s light beside him.
He drew back, startled, thinking great Athena loomed,
then laughed to see his own tall shadow with peaked cap
leaping and dancing on the wall in the lamp’s light. 1295
Like a huge beetle thrusting through a fragrant rose,
Odysseus softly stole into the women’s rooms;
the swans gleamed mistily once more, the great gold birds
in the lamplight’s reflection spread their wings for flight,
and foaming azure waves rolled round from wall to wall 1300
till from the shrine of the gold brainless goddess, lo,
the graceful, godlike body of the swan-born loomed,
a rosy finger placed against her warning lips.
The devious man turned toward her shade like a black swan
and in the dark the whites of his large eyeballs flashed 1305
as he discerned “between her breasts the crystal ball
that rolled like darkling waters where fate’s frigates sailed.
The hairy nostrils, beard, and brains of the man-slayer
smelled sweet as though in truth he’d thrust in a blown rose,
as though he held in his embrace all women on earth. 1310
The decoy bird went first and the bird-catcher followed,
and when they reached the bottom stair, they heard a shriek
from the top tower as though a strident hawk were slain.
Then Helen paled and to her abductor turned with fright:
“That’s a bad sign,” she murmured through clenched, trembling teeth; 1315
but the man-slayer laughed and with no haste replied:
“That’s a good sign; a trusted guard will speak no more.”
Helen turned calm and draped her head with a thin veil
as in the courtyard they saw Kentaur yoke his steeds;
he steamed and laughed like some huge shaggy stable-god 1320
with regal reins and trappings flung across his back.
Then Rocky suddenly loomed with stealth, his vulturous eyes
and black beard gleaming gently in the rosy light,
and when his master questioned him with a sly wink,
he signaled softly how he’d slit the sentry’s throat. 1325
When in the courtyards all the cocks had risen to crow
and tibe poor slaves in dungeons stretched their limbs and yawned,
Odysseus strongly seized the cuter gate’s bronze bolt,
and though he dragged it from its ring with artful skill
the opening hinges shrieked as though they wept with pain. 1330
Snow-ankled Helen laughed and cried, then raised her foot,
but her gold-broidered sandal tripped on the bronze sill,
and thus in its first step toward freedom, her soul staggered.
At once the man of fleet foot reached with his strong arms
and seized the pure-white bird, raised it aloft with grace 1335
and in the fragrant chariot placed it with closed wings.
As Kentaur turned, he suddenly saw his master’s teeth
gleam white and pointed in the courtyard’s early light;
the stars still hung in necklaces of clustered pearls,
on the horizon’s furthest verge day wanly smiled, 1340
and from mist-laden mountains frosty breezes blew.
Gripping his three-lashed whip, the charioteer struck hard
until the horses tossed their haughty heads with wrath
and dashed along the banks where streams through myrtles snaked
and rolled the crimson-golden dawn down toward the sea. 1345
The heart-seducer stooped, and with a soft caress
covered with warm fur Helen’s trembling crystal arms
and on her soft thighs placed a long-haired tiger-skin;
the swan-born shuddered with joy to feel his dreaded hands.
Her eyebrows glittered like two moons but two days old, 1350
she wore a pure-white mantle clear as lucid light,
the hand she carried to her throat, her curling mouth,
and her large eyes, like almonds, slender-shaped and long,
glimmered with spikes of flame in the dawn’s red-rose dusk.
Far off, cock pheasants stopped in their erotic swagger, 1355
at daybreak on the multicolored female’s back, and crowed.
Low in the East, still-wakeful Aphrodite winked
like a night-prowling woman who returns replete,
pallid with too much love in oriental skies; 1360
the rosy mountain peaks laughed like high lustrous thoughts,
and Helen, speechless, raised her pale hands toward the sun
and joyed to feel its warm rays falling on her frozen palms.
V
The sun turned toward his mother, and his mother, frightened,
rushed to light all her ovens at the sky’s foundations
and cast in forty loaves of bread to feed him well.
When the crew saw the sun dip down, they lit a fire
hard by the coastal rocks, then broiled a spitted kid 5
found wedged between a rocky cleft and swiftly roped.
The half-baked piper sat cross-legged on stones and turned
the spit, and as his cross-eyes blinked with smoke, he laughed,
nibbled with secret glee, and licked the luscious meat.
All watched the reddening kid on the hot coals and yearned 10
to eat at last, for hunger threshed their entrails cruelly
until for solace they, too, nibbled and sipped wine.
Thorn-bearded Captain Clam, nostalgic for the sea,
sighed heavily and began to sing a plaintive ditty:
“Ah, Mistress Captain Sea, with all your teeming ships, 15
you swish and sway and saunter on the rosy sands,
you swagger on the beach and fill young men with longing.
The wretched mothers in their rooms, the wretched sisters,
the wretched sweethearts by their looms all raise their ha
nds:
“May you be cursed, O bitter sea! You drive men daft! 20
You strut upon the sands and your white ankles laugh,
your eyes and your teeth laugh, and all your beaches laugh,
till young men laugh and sigh and come down to your sands:
“Hi, Mistress Captain Sea, what wages will you give me?”
‘The four winds for a blanket and the waves for pillow, 25
and a small seagull that will bring the sad news quickly
to mother and to sister and to coddled sweetheart.” ‘ ”
Thus Captain Clam with his hoarse voice sang bitterly
while the spit swiftly turned and broiled the fragrant roast.
Hardihood then spoke roughly and spread his grasping hands: 30
“Well spoken, Captain Clam, well said, but I’m still starved!”
Bush-bearded Captain Clam laughed loud and stuffed his mouth:
“Let that cantankerous song go bawl and babble! Oho!
If you’re in love, give bones and body to the crows!
Lads, I’m a toady toad-fish and a perching perch-fish!” 35
The wine-companions laughed, cut up the kid in shares,
and fell upon it greedily, gleaming tooth and nail;
only the munching of their sturdy Jaws was heard
and clean-picked kid-bones falling on the pebbly beach
and tipped-up wine-gourds gurgling on their greasy lips. 40
When they had eaten well and washed their hands in sea,
the comrades broke their silence and began to talk:
“If only our fierce captain were to loom up now,
bearing in his embrace the lady of arched eyebrows!”
These words of hope still hung upon the piper’s lips 45
when hawk-eyed Granite leapt and thundered through the hush:
“Fellows, is that his seacap gleaming not far off?”
The crew leapt to their feet, made out a chariot’s shape,
picked out their captain’s cap, and saw a pure-white dove
that flew as harbinger ahead and showed the way 50
The five brave gallants dashed like savage lion-cubs
who spy their father with wild game between his teeth.
They raised huge dust clouds, and the piper, panting, last,
ran stumbling on his pigeon-toes, stuttering with yells:
“Fellows, I see two white wings in the chariot there! 55
Ahoy! We’ll sleep tonight beside man-loving Helen!”
Then Captain Clam ran forward and held the foaming steeds;
with shouts and laughter Hardihood seized in brawny arms
the world-famed woman, gently put her down to earth,