and death approached, he crossed the oars on his thin knees
and brine flowed from his salty eyes and stained his cheeks. 1285
‘Alas, I’ve no hope left to find that deathless water.
Cursed be the brainless fool who in this world first tried
to track the deathless water’s source, and died of thirst!’
But then a voice rose from the waters in sweet farewell:
‘Blessed are those eyes that have seen more water than any man! 1290
Blessed be that haughty mind that aimed at the greatest hope!
May you be blessed who rowed the current your life long
and now with dry unfreshened lips descend to Hades
to find the hidden deathless springs and slake your thirst!
My son, it’s Death who keeps and pours the deathless water.’ ” 1295
The man of many sighs stopped speaking, looked about him,
and his old comrades felt a shuddering down their spines
as in the dusk their bodies broke in deadly sweat.
“By God, your armpits drip with dew, your loins have fallen!”
the archer laughed, then portioned food to all his crew. 1300
“But let’s eat first that soul and body may knit well,
for that, I think, is mankind’s oldest, dearest duty;
we’ll fall to dreams then, that old craftsman sleep may come
to find out where our bark has leaked, and calk it well.
At dawn clear thoughts will rise in our sleep-nourished brains 1305
and we shall see what purpose brought us to these sands.”
He spoke, and then their armored jaws crunched into meat;
Diktena, too, ate slowly with the brawny troop
and in the fire her large eyes glittered like two beasts.
For a long time all hearts on the night sands were hushed, 1310
but when they fixed themselves for sleep, Rocky approached
the world-wide roamer, looked at the young maid, and said:
“Against the stream in our great voyage of no return
what do we want with this wild maid, this rutting mare?
If she were forced to row, I’d pity her soft hands, 1315
if she were used for kisses, I’d pity our drained youth,
and if unused at all, she’d eat our bread for nothing.”
Odysseus answered his young friend with mocking voice;
“I, too, don’t know where to enthrone the siren, friend!
Kentaur shall rig the sails and catch the veering winds, 1320
Granite and you, for you’re both strong, shall wield the oars,
Orpheus shall play his flute and firmly harmonize
our oar-blades and our minds with hopeless, gallant tunes,
and I shall hold the tiller toward Death’s secret springs.
You’re right, there seems to be no place for woman here; 1325
but let this night pass, too, the gain’s all to the good,
and when day breaks, what must be done shall then be done.”
He spoke, all flipped the wine gourd for a last deep drink,
then yawned, stretched out in a long row, and sank to sleep;
but their sly leader drew soft Diktena aside 1330
amid the tall green reeds, and sleepless all night long
with pitiless sorrow said goodbye to her forever.
Holding the girl’s refreshing body in his arms,
he felt himself sail onward toward Death’s mystic springs
to find the deathless water that his soul might live. 1335
All life seemed like a water’s murmuring that awakes
between two sleeps and lightly gurgles in the mind of man.
IX
Earth, like a fat and tranquil cow, bent down and chewed
her cud, and ground her somber jaws like two millstones.
The black soil thickly steamed, the sturdy rushes trembled,
and the cold summer-morning frost froze on the shrubs.
The river, a benevolent pasture-bearded god, 5
flowed on, caressing his voluptuous wife, the earth,
who, moist and passive, slowly spread her muddy thighs.
As the dew drenched his hair, the tall mind-spinner strode
along the sands with open and nostalgic heart;
he’d left the glutted girl asleep amid the reeds, 10
her body plowed and planted like the earth in spring,
and he climbed, light of heart, to reconnoiter high.
The torrid sun had not yet risen, but storks awoke
and with long silent wings sped toward the flowing stream;
on a dung-heap a fierce young cock challenged the sun 15
till the sky heard him, laughed, then slowly turned pale-white.
Holding the morning in his hands, a cool round fruit,
Odysseus looked, and seeing not a soul in sight,
freely allowed his tears to trickle down his cheeks.
For a long time he let the salty waters flow, 20
and felt refreshed; he had longed deeply for this hour.
Slowly he turned and watched the sea: her curling waves
swelled up erect to reach the sun, and turned rose-red;
he watched his palms, and they too calmed and turned to rose.
The rugged seaman smiled, and from his briny tears 25
curved rainbows gleamed in mid-air, snared in his long lashes.
Day broke, the Morning Star in azure melted slowly,
the great god woke and climbed the sky, thrust his gold horns
under the sea-horizon’s roots, lifted the clouds,
and slowly freed from night his forehead, eyes, and mouth, 30
then balanced tranquilly among the heaving billows
and with great joy greeted the world like his own child.
Broad and rose-red, the river glowed, the gardens shone,
fishes upon the glittering waters leapt and played,
fishermen stretched and yawned, woke up, and seized their nets. 35
A bull-calf left his mother’s udders, spread his legs,
stumbled with tail erect, and frisked in the moist pastures;
his mother felt the sun-bull pierce deep in her loins,
and sweetly mooed, unmoving, warm, bursting with milk.
All things seemed broad and gentle, earth a placid cow 40
that browsed on grass and gods, that ruminated men
and passed them slowly through her thousand-fold intestines
then cast them up in sun and munched them once again.
With no false hope or wrath, Odysseus clearly saw
his body like a crooked twig with its blue flower 45
trembling mid-air within the cow’s Cimmerian mouth.
Calmly his brains began to shape, to unshape the world:
he felt that life and death were two milk-laden dugs
and that sometimes we glued our hungry lips to one,
and clung to the other at times until we fell asleep. 50
His mind, too, mounted with the sun, serene and calm,
and heard the pitch-black deathless waters roar within him
and listened to Death’s hidden springs deep in his heart;
though wretched man’s short life was not enough to reach them,
yet great joy to that man who passed through the most water! 55
The billows he had crossed plunged through his voyaged mind
but seemed too few, and his proud heart now sighed with shame.
Life passes, lost in mid-air, and all far-off shores
like sirens shout and spring above the teasing waves.
“Forward, my soul! So long as my hair blows in the wind 60
I shall not leave you unprotected, but hand in hand
—don’t you complain—we’ll stroll and saunter the wide world through!”
He spoke, and felt mute tenderness for his poor soul,
that wretched
mud-winged glowworm crawling through his flesh;
quickening his pace, he longed to join his friends again 65
and start the hopeless rowing toward the plunging cliff.
When Aphrodite rose and the Pleiades sank to rest,
the friends together floundered from the nets of sleep
and plunged to cool their bodies in the emerald waves.
They snatched a bite of bread, then all together trudged 70
toward the port town to see new oven-loaves of men.
“You’d think God grabbed some clay, pummeled these dwarfish souls
with two large pitch-black coals beneath their arching brows
then placed them row on row to dry in the hot sun.
If a strong wind should blow, they’d crumble away to dust, 75
if it should rain they’d melt to mud, and phew! once more
God would seize mud and blood and pummel away for life!”
Thus spoke the cross-eyed piper, then spread his stork-lean legs;
behind him the two towering gallants crunched on sand,
and last trudged splayfoot, snorting like a panting boar, 80
opening wide wells in the soft sand with his thick feet.
The muddy hovels opened, and young girls appeared
with smooth tight buttocks, held their water pitchers high
on upright heads, and ambled toward the banks to fill them.
Kentaur devoured them with his eyes and rubbed his bellies: 85
“Ah, harbor breeze, how swiftly you mature breasts here!”
Thus did the huge hog-body grunt and wave to the girls,
but they slipped by with shapely thighs, and giggled shyly.
Long rows of ovens smoked already, babies wailed,
and old crones spread the russet corn on terraces; 90
against the sand-swept walls the grapevines smelled of musk
and their sweet-peppery fragrance merged with rank manure.
Old men fell on their knees and turned their faces east,
flooded with light, toward their great overlord, the Sun,
their prayers hovering softly on their trembling lips. 95
Still dazed with sleep, the young men set the cattle free,
and from the darkness the oxen ambled, shining, plump,
and plod on, stretching sadly toward the far-off fields
their long necks bruised by many heavy yokes, then lowed,
plowed on, and licked their nostrils with their nigged tongues. 100
Deep in his mountain-nourished heart sad Rocky sighed
and yearned for the land’s sweetness, a clodhopper’s cares.
How had he fallen in the sea-battler’s briny hands
and followed this home-wrecker like a yelping dog?
Dear God, if only he could shake off free, plunge down 105
ravines, skirt mountain slopes, sit high on rocky crags,
eat wild hare once again, drink water from deep springs!
But as he brooded thus in secret, the boatman came
with rolling sailor’s stride, with cap like a ship’s prow,
holding on high a ripe and golden-rayed sunflower. 110
“This rich fat soil, I think, has drugged my heart with spells!
Brothers, my feet plunge roots, I’m friends with earth once more,
my nostrils smell manure, they flare with rank delight,
and a sweet sudden thought intoxicates my mind:
Comrades, let’s rip the planking of our wayward ship 115
and with its deck beams, mizzenmast, and its deep hull
build us a house like others to stabilize our hearts!”
With a wry face, the piper stammered mockingly:
“May you rejoice in the fine stink of your new house,
and may you find a stout-assed maid, long-snouted sow, 120
who may beget you babes and pigs, may they live long!
May you become a staid town chief with lofty cap!”
But their snake-minded master looked in Rocky’s eyes,
and the youth understood his gaze and bit his lips:
“Your hints don’t make my heart recoil, lone-hearted man. 125
I set my mind completely free to yearn in secret,
to want what it has lost and long for what it hasn’t;
learn that I hold the straining reins in both hands, tight,
then loose my horses fearlessly on high dream pastures!”
The brave lad braked his tongue, but still his mind raced on. 130
In his strong fingers Granite mutely broke his staff
and twitched and steamed as though to dash back toward the sea;
but the fat sot, who knew his master’s tricks by heart,
picked up the piper like a suckling child and yelled:
“Let’s go! He casts his bait to us old sharks in vain! 135
Hey, master, if we wanted marriage, joys, housekeeping cares,
would we set foot, do you think, on your death-plunging prow?”
The devious man then raised on high his heavy hands:
“By God, I’ve never deigned to cast you teasing bait!
My heart was suddenly caught by earth’s seductive warmth; 140
I envied prudent virtue, mankind’s simple joys,
but if you’ve scorned them once, I’ve scorned them all a thousand times!”
Day spurted like a honeybee, the meadows buzzed,
the sun beat down the harbor’s sandy reach of shore,
men, ships, and cattle shook themselves and uttered cries 145
as though light suddenly had uncoiled their twisted minds.
Thickly, like melted gold, the sun poured on the waters,
the warm sea seethed and steamed with fishes, the boats tossed,
—tempestuous weather—and the magicians sat by wharves
and sold winds dearly by the dram to passing skippers. 150
At the port’s mouth, where the two mighty waters met,
—light green of the wide river, blue of the open sea—
the friends were swigging in a humble fishers’ tavern.
They gulped their barley-wine with greed, and their minds glowed
until the gaudy harbor gleamed in their dark eyes: 155
slender hard-almond bodies with their thickset skulls,
blacks with stout bison-loins who fetched wares to their masters
as they sat drinking sherbets in the heavy shade.
Deep voices, secret instincts in the archer’s chest
rose up and fell like long-forgotten ancient sounds, 160
and his mind struggled to recall, his inner ear to listen.
Before his birth once, long ago, his eyes had seen,
his nostrils had once smelled this crowded port—but how,
and when? Although he asked, his heart gave no reply.
Dimly his blood recalled, his heart beat sluggishly: 165
a thousand grandfathers long ago, his forebears passed
this way with their pine dugouts and their tawdry goods
and suffered deeply for a kiss, a bite of bread,
for still their blood seethed blindly in their grandson’s veins.
Dear God, how much more ancient is the heart’s deep root, 170
and mind is but a last, last bloom of little memory!
The heart wants to recount what it has seen and suffered,
but stutters, mute, and cannot brim with a single word;
it hops round in our chests and shrills like a caged bird,
but the mind, whose life is shallow, who’s seen and suffered little, 175
finds well-matched prudent words and flouts them with glib skill.
The deep-souled man turned to his friends and bared his thoughts:
“I’ve roamed all seas and lands, I’ve tramped a thousand roads,
I’ve suffered much and thought my mind had reached its goal,
but this earth always overreaches me, life che
ats me 180
by changing face so often my mind can’t grasp it all,
for memories surge in my heart’s root that once, perhaps,
once long ago, with yet another boat and crew,
with yet another body I moored in this same harbor.
Ah, could we only know, friends, all that our hearts know!” 185
Glutton guffawed and mocked his master jokingly;
“Brother, just get me good and drunk, and then I’ll spiel
where my mind roamed a thousand years before my birth!
Do you want names and places? As soon as my heart’s drunk!
Drink up your barley-wine, my lads! Let deep springs spout!” 190
But as the guzzler drained his jug, an old blind bard
came close and huddled at his feet, stretched out his hands,
rocked his lean body and began a bitter song:
“I saw a rower pull his oars, and my heart ached.
He sighed, and his back throbbed, his loins fell out of joint, 195
he raised his head to gaze at and recall the sun
but a lean whip with sharp long nails swept round his neck.
‘Row on! Let’s get there fast to fetch our merchandise
that our old master may dress well and stroll the quays;
let’s bring his old wife balms so she’ll grow young again!’ 200
Alas, some labor in the sun, some eat in shade;
I’ve seen the mud-drenched fellah drain the murky river
then sow his scant seed, harvest it, and yearn for bread.
What is it you’re remembering, child, that you sigh so?’
the timid mother asks her son, to plumb the riddle. 205
‘Ah, wretched Mother, bread!’ her hungry child replies.
The people stoop to earth and call to their god: ‘Help us!’
but he sits buxom in the shade, well-greased with lard,
looks on the fields, grows glad, then looks on man, and fattens.
I saw the embalmer stinking as he drained his corpses, 210
his feet twined with intestines, his hands soaked in pus;
his bread smells of cadavers, and he dines on carcass,
he turns his poor wife’s stomach when he wants to touch her.
I’ve seen the scrivener sit cross-legged in teeming streets,
bent over, listening, holding parchment and sharp reeds. 215
Mothers weep out their clamorous letters to their sons,
pale maidens sigh, bend down, and tumble out their pain:
O scrivener, write him, tell him how my weak arms want him,
that I can’t bear our separation, that I’ll die soon!’