The Return of Odysseus: Excerpts From a Modern Sequel to Homer's Odyssey

And when in his spacious courtyards Odysseus had cut down
the insolent youths, lie hung on high his satiated bow
and strode to the warm bath to cleanse his brawny body.
Two slaves poured forth the waters, but when they saw their lord
they shrieked in terror, for his curly loins and belly steamed
and thick black blood dripped down from both his murderous palms;
their copper jugs rolled clanging on the marble tiles.
The much-wandering one smiled sweetly in his twisted beard
and with his eyebrows signaled the frightened girls to go.
For hours he laved himself in lukewarm water, his veins
spread out like rivers in his body, his kidneys cooled,
and that great mind was in the waters cleansed and full reposed.
Then softly sweet with aromatic oils he smoothes
his long coarse hair, his body hardened by black brine,
till youthfulness within his wintry flesh awakes in flowers.
On golden-studded nails robes hung in a long row,
woven by his faithful wife flash in the fragrant shadows,
embroidered with gods and hurrying winds and swift triremes:
and stretching forth a sunburnt hand he quickly chooses
the one most flaming, throws it flat across his shoulder,
and steaming still, unbars the door and strides across the threshold.
His slaves in the shade were dazzled, the huge smoked beams
of his ancestral home flashed with reflected light,
and waiting by the throne, Penelope, pale and speechless,
arched her numb head to look, her knees turning to stone:
“This is not he whom I’ve awaited year after year, O gods,
this dragon of forty ells stampeding throughout my house!”
But the mind archer quickly divines the obscure dread
of the wretched woman, and to his swelling breast replies:
“O heart, she who so many years awaited you at home,
she is that one you have longed for, battling the seven seas,
the cruel gods and the deep voices of your undying mind.”
He spoke, but his heart leapt not in his exalted breast ;
still in his nostrils steams the blood of the newly slain,
still sees his woman entangled amid their naked forms,
and glancing at her obliquely, his grim eyes glaze; almost
in the bubbling wrath of slaughter he might have pierced her through.
Swiftly he passed and silently stood on his wide threshold;
the burning sun in splendor sank and filled all corners
and every vaulted cellar with shadows of rose and azure.
In the center Athena’s altar smoked, black, satiated,
while in the long arcades in the cool night air there swung
slowly the hanging slaves, their eyes and swollen tongues protruding.
Serenely his own eyes gaze on the starry eyes of night
that from the mountains with her curly flocks descends
and like a mist within his heart distills, till all
his murderous work and whirr of arrows is slaked in peace,
and his tiger heart in the soft darkness licks its lips.
His brains after the cleansing bath grow calm, nor look
behind to the splattered blood, nor in their cunning toils
scheme how to save from zoning storms the dreadful head.
Thus the much-suffering one in peace basked in this holy hour
on his ancestral threshold standing, new-bathed and shorn of care.

Meanwhile in every courtyard the sprouted news has spread
how stealthily the master stole to his ancestral land
and round I he feasting boards slaughtered the grooms like bulls.
Leaning upon their staffs, the slain men’s fathers shriek
and rouse the irate townspeople, banging from door to door;
the common workmen throw their rough tools on the ground,
the craftsmen close their shops, and from the seaside taverns
the drunken oarsmen stumble, climbing the winding paths.
Cluster by cluster in the market place the people swarm
like angry bees when hornets rob their hives of honey.
A woman who had lost her man on savage shores for Helen’s sake
raised high her uncaressed, love-aching arms, and cried:
“Well have we welcomed him, my lads, that barbarous butcher!
Behold his gifts: a sword, a shield, and three flasks of poison:
one to be drunk in the morning, the other at noon, and the third,
O dear gods, the most bitter one, to be drunk in bed, alone!
Shrilly from doors, roofs, terraces, the widows swarm
flinging black kerchiefs about their heads, beating their breasts:
“May the gods curse him who scorched us in our first flowering!
Our masterbeds are covered with cobwebs, our honest homes are in ruin,
and all for the sake of a shameless slut, that vile man-eater!

Now the old hidden wounds in the heart open again,
the eyes grow dim, the little light of the sun is extinguished,
and on black floating clouds astride, the dark shadows of men
stranded on hopeless shores, slowly come drifting in.
They pass through the desolate dusk in silence, enwrapped in cobwebs,
and swiftly gliding along high walls, vanish in doorways.
One lightly touches his father’s back, and the old man shivers,
another lets fall his shadow on the scattered stones of his house.
The stroked backs shiver, the hollow knees buckle under with fright,
the air is choked with dead men, and the widows, suifocating,
tightly embrace about them the empty air, and moan.
An armless man, whose hands had been eaten by Trojan shores,
leaps on a rock, and soon there huddle about him thickly
the maimed, the blind, the halt whom man-eating war had mangled.
“Comrades,”he roars, flailing the air with the stumps of his arms,
“our master s returned, he’s brought back his body unharmed and whole,
both of his hands, his feet, his eyes and his wily brain;
but we, what are we but crawling beasts groveling on the ground,
stumping on arms without arms, leaping on feet without feet,
and with our empty eyesockets rattling the nobles’ mansions?
His voice stops short, his head thrusts back into hollow shoulders,
his comrades cheer him wildly and cast their arms about him,
and the widows shamelessly rush into the streets, bareheaded,
grab torches, scatter throughout the town, deriding the men:
“Ho! look at these gallant lads dripping with tears and saliva!
Go cover your heads with our kerchiefs, take up our distaffs and spindles!
And women, raise high your torches, set fire to that murderous man.
Tonight shall his palace be tumbled to ashes and flung to the winds!" And you, in the quiet of night, you feel, O harsh sea-battler,
the tumult of the insolent crowd, the flaming torches,
and straining your neck to hear, your heart takes fire:
“Even my island moves under my feet like an angry sea,
and I thought to find firm earth, to thrust deep roots in the soil!
The armature of earth is rent, the hull gapes open,
to my left roars the impudent mob, to my right the nobles;
how heavy the cargo grows; I must heave to and unballast!”
He spoke, and rushed with great strides to the central courtyard,
his ears, lips, temples quivering like those of a greyhound,
and groping about his body stealthily, he seizes
his wide, two-bladed sword, embossed with many slaughters,
and all at once his heart grows whole again, and tranquil.
From the high roof tops his slaves discern the wild mob seething,
unloose their locks and fill the rooms with lamentation;
the queen takes courage, flies to where her husband stands
and mutely flings her arms about his unmoved knees;
but he commands the women to lock themselves in the highest tower,
then turning, bellows for his son, till all the palace rings.

Father and son unbolt then the outer gate and dash
stealthily into the road, treading the earth like leopards.
It was a sweet spring night, in the blueblack heavens hung
the dewy stars enwrapped in a soft down, and trembled
like early almond flowers swung by the evening breezes.

Somewhere high in the gorges of heaven, in the blast of the wind
the stars like molting pure white flowers in darkness fall,
and low on the ground, like constellations, the houses sprout
suddenly with lamps, behind which eyes watch secretly
the two nightprowlers plunging headlong from the palace.
But doors are quickly bolted, clanging in the strange quiet;
old women spit across their breasts to ward off evil,
and black dogs thrust their tails between their thighs, and tremble.
The stooped death-dealer in his brine-black heart drinks in
the uncivil poisoned welcome of his malevolent people,
and in his wrathful heart a lightning longing strikes him
to fall with remorseless rage on his isle, to pierce with his sword
women and men and gods, and on the flaming shores of dawn
scatter to the wide winds the ashes of his own country.
Such thoughts revolve in the wrathful man’s blood-lapping brain;
his son looks at him sideways, guessing with dread what thoughts
swirl in this pitiless stranger who suddenly swooped on his island,
flung into seething uproar his palace, mother and slaves,
and from his own long locks then snatched the royal crown.
Who was he? His own blood had leapt not when on his holy threshold,
huddled in rags, hunched up, he first saw this filthy stranger;
nor had his mother flung herself on his breast to anchor,
but terrified, crouched in speechless dread in the women’s quarter.
“Sir, speak now with kindness to your loved subjects, repress
your rage like a noble, consider that your people also
possesses a soul, is even a god, but does not know it.”
Thus spoke the son, looking his father straight in the eyes.
But he was breathing in the sea, nearing the sounding shore,
his mind grew cool, and soon in his palpitating breast
a white gull soared from far-off seas and fluttered its wings.