Reading Cyclops II

The Cyclops—Part II At evening came the shepherd with his flock, his woolly flock. The rams as well, this time, entered by the cave: by some sheepherding whim— or a god’s bidding—none were left outside. 5 He hefted his great boulder into place and sat him down to milk the bleating ewes in proper order, putting the lambs to suck, and swiftly ran through all his evening chores. Then he caught two more men and feasted on them. 10 My moment was at hand, and I went forward holding an ivy bowl of my dark drink, looking up, saying: ‘Cyclops, try some wine, Here’s liquor to wash down your scraps of men. 15 Taste it, and see the kind of drink we carried under our planks. I meant it for an offering if you would help us home. But you are mad, unbearable, a bloody monster! After this, will any other traveler come to see you?’ He seized and drained the bowl, and it went down so fiery and smooth he called for more: ‘Give me another, thank you kindly. Tell me, how are you called? I’ll make a gift will please you. Even Cyclopes know the wine grapes grow 25 out of grassland and loam in heaven’s rain, but here’s a bit of nectar and ambrosia [food of the gods]!’ 20 Three bowls I brought him, and he poured them down. I saw the fuddle and flush come over him, then I sang out in cordial tones: 30 ‘Cyclops, you ask my honorable name? Remember the gift you promised me, and I shall tell you. My name is Nobody: mother, father, and friends, everyone calls me Nobody.’ And he said: ‘Nobody’s my meat, then, after I eat his friends. Others come first. There’s a noble gift, now.’ 35 Even as he spoke, he reeled and tumbled backward, his great head lolling to one side; and sleep 40 took him like any creature. Drunk, hiccupping, he dribbled streams of liquor and bits of men. Now, by the gods, I drove my big hands spike deep in the embers, charring it again, and cheered my men along with battle talk 45 to keep their courage up: no quitting now. The pike of olive, green though it had been, reddened and glowed as if about to catch. I drew it from the coals and my four fellows gave me a hand, lugging it near the Cyclops 50 as more than natural force nerve them; straight forward they sprinted, lifted it, and rammed it deep in his crater eye, and leaned on it turning it as a shipwright turns a drill in planking, having men below to swing 55 the two-handled strap that spins it in the groove. So with our brand we bored [drilled] that great eye socket while blood ran out around the red-hot bar. Eyelid and lash were seared; the pierced ball hissed broiling, and the roots [nerves] popped. In a smithy one sees a white-hot axehead or an adze [sword blade] plunged and wrong in a cold tub, screeching steam— the way they make soft iron hale and hard—: just so that eyeball hissed around the spike. 65 The Cyclops bellowed and the rock roared round him, and we fell back in fear. Clawing his face he tugged the bloody spike out of his eye, threw it away, and his wild hands went groping; then he set up a howl for Cyclopes 70 who lived in caves on windy peaks nearby. Some heard him; and they came by diverse ways to clump around outside and call: ‘What ails you, Polyphemus? Why do you cry so sore 75 in the starry night? You will not let us sleep. Sure no man’s driving off your flock? No man has tricked you, ruined you?’ 60 Out of the cave the mammoth Polyphemus roared in answer: 80 ‘Nobody, Nobody’s tricked me, Nobody’s ruined me!’ To this rough shout they made a sage reply: ‘Ah well, if nobody has played you foul there in your lonely bed, we are no use in pain given by great Zeus. Let it be your father, 86 Poseidon Lord, to whom you pray.’ So saying they trailed away. And I was filled with laughter to see how like a charm the name deceived them. Now Cyclops, wheezing as the pain came on him, 90 fumbled to wrench away the great doorstone and squatted in the breach with arms thrown wide for any silly beast or man who bolted— hoping somehow I might be such a fool. But I kept thinking how to win the game: 95 death sat there huge; how could we slip away? I drew on all my wits, and ran through tactics, reasoning as a man will for dear life, until a trick came—and it pleased me well. The Cyclops’s rams were handsome, fat, with heavy 100 fleeces, a dark violet. Three abreast I tied them silently together, twining cords of willow from the ogre’s bed; then slung a man under each middle one 105 to ride there safely, shielded left and right. So three sheep could convey each man. I took the wooliest ram, the choicest of the flock, and hung myself under his kinky belly, pulled up tight, with fingers twisted deep 110 in sheepskin ringlets for an iron grip. So, breathing hard, we waited until morning. When Dawn spread out her fingertips of rose the rams began to stir, moving for pasture, and peals of bleating echoed round the pens 115 where dams with udders full called for a milking. Blinded, and sick with pain from his head wound, the master stroked each ram, then let it pass, but my men riding on the pectoral [chest/stomach] fleece the giant’s blind hands blundering never found. 120 Last of them all my ram, the leader, came, weighted by wool and me with my meditations. The Cyclops patted him, and then he said: ‘Sweet cousin ram, why lag behind the rest in the night cave? You never linger so, 125 but graze before them all, and go afar to crop sweet grass, and take your stately way leading along the streams, until at evening you run to be the first one in the fold. Why, now, so far behind? Can you be grieving 130 over your Master’s eye? That carrion rogue and his accursed companions burnt it out when he had conquered all my wits with wine. Nobody will not get out alive, I swear. Oh, had you brain and voice to tell 135 where he may be now, dodging all my fury! Bashed by this hand and bashed on this rock wall his brains would strew the floor, and I should have rest from the outrage Nobody worked upon me.’ He sent us into the open, then. Close by, 140 I dropped and rolled clear of the ram’s belly, going this way and that to untie the men. With many glances back, we rounded up his fat, stiff-legged sheep to take aboard, and drove them down to where the good ship lay. 145 We saw, as we came near, our fellows’ faces shining; then we saw them turn to grief tallying those who had not fled from death. I hushed them, jerking head and eyebrows up, and in a low voice told them: ‘Load this herd; 150 move fast, and put the ship’s head toward the breakers[waves].’ They all pitched in at loading, then embarked and struck their oars into the sea. Far out, as far off shore as shouted words would carry, I sent a few back to the adversary: 155 ‘O Cyclops! Would you feast on my companions? Puny, am I, in a cave man’s hands? How do you like the beating that we gave you, you damned cannibal? Eater of guests under your roof! Zeus and the gods have paid you!’ The blind thing in his doubled fury broke a hilltop in his hands and heaved it after us. Ahead of our black prow it struck and sank whelmed in a spuming geyser, a giant wave that washed the ship stern foremost back to shore. 165 I got the longest boathook out and stood fending us off, with furious nods to all to put their backs into a racing stroke— row, row, or perish. So the long oars bent kicking the foam sternward, making head 170 until we drew away, and twice as far. 160 Now when I cupped my hands I head the crew in low voices protesting: ‘Godsake, Captain! Why bait the beast again? Let him alone!’ 175 ‘That tidal wave he made on the first throw all but beached us.’ ‘All but stove us in!’ ‘Give him our bearing with your trumpeting, he’ll get the range and lob a boulder.’ 180 ‘Aye He’ll smash our timbers and our heads together!’ I would not heed them in my glorying spirit, but let my anger flare and yelled: ‘Cyclops, 185 if ever mortal man inquire how you were put to shame and blinded, tell him Odysseus, raider of cities, took your eye: Laertes’s son, whose home’s on Ithaca!’ At this he gave a mighty sob and rumbled: 190 ‘Now comes the weird [destiny] upon me, spoke of old. A wizard, grand and wondrous, lived here—Telemus, a son of Eurymus, great length of days he had in wizardry among the Cyclopes, and these things he foretold for time to come: 195 my great eye lost, and at Odysseus’s hands. Always I had in mind some giant, armed in giant force, would come against me here. But this, but you—small, pitiful, and twiggy— you put me down with wine, you blinded me. 200 Come back, Odysseus, and I’ll treat you well, praying the god of earthquakes [Poseidon] to befriend you— his son I am, for he by his avowal fathered me, and, if he will, he may heal me of this black wound—he and no other 205 of all the happy gods or mortal men.’ Few words I shouted in reply to him: ‘If I could take away your life I would and take your time away, and hurl you down to hell! The god of earthquakes could not heal you there!’ At this he stretched his hands out in his darkness toward the sky of stars, and prayed Poseidon: ‘O hear me, lord, blue girdler of the islands, if I am thine indeed, and thou art father: 210 grant that Odysseus, raider of cities, never 215 see his home: Laertes’s son, I mean, who kept his hall on Ithaca. Should destiny intend that he shall see his roof again among his family in his father land, far be that day, and dark the years between. 220 Let him lose all companions, and return under strange sail to bitter days at home.’ In these words he prayed, and the god heard him. Now he laid hands upon a bigger stone and wheeled around, titanic for the cast, 225 to let it fly in the black-prowed vessel’s track. But it fell short, just aft the steering oar, and whelming seas rose giant above the stone to bear us onward toward the island. There as we ran in we saw the squadron waiting, the trim ships drawn up side by side, and all our troubled friends who waited, looking seaward. We beached her, grinding keel in the soft sand, and waded in, ourselves, on the sandy beach. 235 Then we unloaded all the Cyclops’s flock to make division, share and share alike, only my fighters voted that my ram, the prize of all, should go to me. I slew him by the seaside and burnt his long thighbones 240 to Zeus beyond the stormcloud, Cronus’s son, who rules the world. But Zeus disdained my offering: destruction for my ships he had in store and death for those who sailed them, my companions. Now all day long until the sun went down 245 we made our feast on mutton and sweet wine, till after sunset in the gathering dark we went to sleep above the wash of ripples. 230 When the young Dawn with fingertips of rose touched the world, I roused the men, gave orders 250 to man the ships, cast off the mooring lines; and filing in to sit beside the rowlocks oarsmen in line dipped oars in the gray sea. So we moved out, sad in the vast offing, having our precious lives, but not our friends.