Nikos Kazantzakis - The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel [Excerpts]

Nikos Kazantzakis - The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel: Holy Light Drips Like Honey


O Sun, great Oriental, my proud mind's golden cap,
I love to wear you cocked askew, to play and burst
in song throughout our lives, and so rejoice our hearts.
Good is this earth, it suits us! Like the global grape
it hangs, dear G-d, in the blue air and sways in the gale,
nibbled by all the birds and spirits of the four winds.
Come, let's start nibbling too and so refresh our minds!
Between two throbbing temples in the mind's great wine vats
I tread on the crisp grapes until the wild must boils
and my mind laughs and steams within the upright day.
Has the earth sprouted wings and sails, has my mind swayed
until black-eyed Necessity got drunk and burst in song?
Above me spreads the raging sky, below me swoops
my belly, a white gull that breasts the cooling waves;
my nostrils fill with salty spray, the billows burst
swiftly against my back, rush on, and I rush after.
Great Sun, who pass on high yet watch all things below,
I see the sun-drenched cap of the great castle-wrecker:
let's kick and scuff it round to see where it will take us!
Learn, lads, that Time has cycles and that Fate has wheels
and that the mind of man sits high and twirls them round;
come quick, let's spin the world about and send it tumbling!
O Sun, my quick coquetting eye, my red-haired hound,
sniff out all quarries that I love, give them swift chase,
tell me all that you've seen on earth, all that you've heard
and I shall pass them through my entrails' secret forge
till slowly, with profound caresses, play and laughter,
stones, water, fire, and earth shall be transformed to spirit,
and the mud-winged and heavy soul, freed of its flesh,
shall like a flame serene ascend and fade in sun.
You've drunk and eaten well, my lads, on festive shores,
until the feast within you turned to dance and laughter,
love-bites and idle chatter that dissolved in flesh;
but in myself the meat turned monstrous, the wine rose,
a sea-chant leapt within me, rushed to knock me down,
until I longed to sing this song--make way, my brothers!
Oho, the festival lasts long, the place is small;
make way, let me have air, give me a ring to stretch in,
a place to spread my shinbones, to kick up my heels,
so that my giddiness won't wound your wives and children.
As soon as I let loose my words along the shore
to hunt all mankind down, I know they'll choke my throat,
and when my full neck smothers and my pain grows vast
I shall rise up--make way!--to dance on raging shores.
Snatch prudence from me, G-d, burst my brows wide, fling far
the trap doors of my mind, let the world breathe awhile.
Ho, workers, peasants, you ant-swarms, carters of grain,
I fling red poppies down, may the world burst in flames!
Maidens, with wild doves fluttering in your soothing breasts,
brave lads, with your black-hilted swords thrust in your belts,
no matter how you strive, earth's but a barren tree,
but I, ahoy, with my salt songs shall force the flower!
Fold up your aprons, craftsmen, cast your tools away,
fling off Necessity's firm yoke, for Freedom calls.
Freedom, my lads, is neither wine nor a sweet maid, 55
not goods stacked in vast cellars, no, nor sons in cradles;
it's but a scornful, lonely song the wind has taken. . .
Come, drink of Lethe's brackish spring to cleanse your minds,
forget your cares, your poisons, your ignoble profits,
and make your hearts as babes, unburdened, pure and light. 60
O brain, be flowers that nightingales may come to sing!
Old men, howl all you can to bring your white teeth back,
to make your hair crow-black, your youthful wits go wild,
for by our Lady Moon and our L-rd Sun, I swear
old age is a false dream and Death but fantasy, 65
all playthings of the brain and the soul's affectations,
all but a mistral's blast that blows the temples wide;
the dream was lightly dreamt and thus the earth was made;
let's take possession of the world with song, my lads!
Aye, fellow craftsmen, seize your oars, the Captain comes; 70
and mothers, give your sweet babes suck to stop their wailing!
Ahoy, cast wretched sorrow out, prick up your ears--
I sing the sufferings and the torments of renowned Odysseus!
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And when in his wide courtyards Odysseus had cut down
the insolent youths, he hung on high his sated bow
and strode to the warm bath to cleanse his bloodstained body.
Two slaves prepared his bath, but when they saw their L-rd
they shrieked with terror, for his loins and belly steamed 5
and thick black blood dripped down from both his murderous
palms;
their copper jugs rolled clanging on the marble tiles.
The wandering man smiled gently in his thorny beard
and with his eyebrows signed the frightened girls to go.
For hours he washed himself in the warm water, his veins 10
spread out like rivers in his body, his loins cooled,
and his great mind was in the waters cleansed and calmed.
Then softly sweet with aromatic oils he smoothed
his long coarse hair, his body hardened by black brine,
till youthfulness awoke his wintry flesh with flowers.
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wiftly he passed and mutely stood on his wide sill;
the burning sun in splendor sank and filled all nooks
and every vaulted cell with rose and azure shade.
Athena's altar in the court still smoked, replete,
while in the long arcades in cool night air there swung
the new-hung slaves, their eyes and swollen tongues protruding.
His own eyes calmly gazed in the starry eyes of night,
who from the mountains with her curly flocks descended,
till all his murderous work and whir of arrows sank
within his heart in peace, distilled like mist or dream,
and his wild tiger heart in darkness licked its lips.
After the joy of bathing, his mind grew serene,
nor did he once glance backward toward the splattered blood,
nor in its cunning coils once scheme for ways to save
his dreadful head from dangers that besieged it now.
Thus in this holy hour Odysseus basked in peace,
on his ancestral threshold standing, bathed and shorn of care.
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Secret and ancient wounds in their hearts bled again,
their eyes grew dim, and the sun's little light grew faint
as on black floating clouds astride, dark shades of men,
stranded on hopeless shores, came slowly drifting in.

They passed through desolate dusk in silence, wrapped in webs,
and swiftly gliding along high walls, vanished in doorways.
One lightly touched his father, and the old man shivered,
one let his shadow fall on his home's scattered stones,
one on the shriveled apples of his wife's worn breasts.
The fondled shoulders quivered, knees gave way with fright,
the air with dead men thickened, and the stifling widows
tightly embraced the empty air with grief, and moaned.
An armless man, whose hands the Trojan shores devoured,
leapt on a rock, and soon there huddled thickly round him
the maimed, blind, warped and crippled of man-eating War.
"Comrades," he yelled, and flailed the air with his arm-stumps,
"our king's come back and brought his body whole, unharmed,
both of his hands, his feet, his eyes, his wily brain;
but we're now crawling beasts that grovel on the ground;
we grasp, but with no hands, we leap, but with no feet,
and with our blank eyesockets knock on the archons' doors."
Then his voice stopped, his head thrust back in hollow shoulders,
and his friends cheered him wildly and embraced him tight;
the widows rushed into the streets bareheaded, bold,
grabbed torches, scattered through the town and spurred the men:
"Ho! look at these brave lads that drip tears and saliva!
Take up our spindles, bind your heads with our black kerchiefs!
Women, raise high your torches, fire that murderous man,
burn down his palace tonight and strew the ashes to the four
winds!"

And you, in the quiet of night, you felt, O harsh sea-battler,
the tumult of the insolent crowd, the flaming torches,
and as you stretched your neck to listen, your heart flared:
"Even my isle moves under my feet like angry seas,
and here I thought to find firm earth, to plant deep roots!
The armature of earth is rent, the hull gapes open;
the mob roars to my left, the archons crowd my right;
how heavy the cargo grows; I'll heave to, and unballast!"
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But raising his eyes boldly, the brave youth replied:
"If I were king I'd sit beneath our plane tree's shade
and listen like a father to all my people's cares,
dispensing bread and freedom justly to all men;
I mean to follow in the path of our old kings."
His father laughed and his eyes flashed. "My son," he mocked,
"those follow old kings best who leave them far behind."
The young man, struck with fright, stepped back and thought:
"This man
is like the cruel male hare that kills its newborn sons.
O G-ds, I'd seize him if I dared, bind both his hands,

The lightning-minded man divined at once his son's
dark thoughts, and his clear heart was wrapped in sudden clouds:
"You haste my going too soon, my only son. It's said:
'Die, dear, that I may love you; live, and be my foe.' "
The young man stood abashed and dropped his silent glance,
but his voracious father shuddered, for he recalled
how as a still unshaven lad, in youthful rage,
he too had raised a mailed fist once against his father.
One day while hunting wild game in a black ravine
they found in a deep pit a wounded rutting boar
that snarled with rage and plowed the earth with its sharp tusks.
As both rushed panting, the son sprang with ready spear
but, in his father's feet entangled, tripped and fell.
He leapt at once erect, frothing with seething rage,
his blood rose high and turned his brain to mud, but as
he roared and flung himself on his father, just in time
their hunting hounds dashed in the breach to part them. Ah,
now in his own son's eyes he saw that black ravine.
Gently he touched with love his son's mane, raven-black:
"Ah, lad, I feel your pain, and I love your sharp impatience,
but hold your wrath: all things shall come, all in their turn.
I've done my duty as a son, surpassed my father,
now in your turn surpass me both in brain and spear,
a difficult task, but if you can't, our race must perish,
and then our turn shall come to fall prey to the mob."
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It was a sweet spring night, in blue-black heavens hung
the dewy stars enwrapped in a soft down, and trembled
like early almond flowers swung by evening breezes.
"My son," Odysseus said, as blue shores swept his eyes,
"I bring to mind a brilliant shore where waves once cast me;
my sturdy boat was wrecked one evening on sharp rocks
and all night long I fought with Death in frothing tombs;
sometimes the Sea-G-d smashed my sides, sometimes, in turn,
with seaweed hands I smashed his murderous three-pronged fork.
I held my stubborn soul between my teeth, like meat,
and when day broke, stretched out my hands, grabbed at the
world,
hung to an osier branch, and dragged myself ashore;
at once the almighty and pain-easing G-d of sleep
poured on my salt-cracked battered flesh his tender down.
Next morning in my sleep the roaring pebbles rang
with rowdy laughter till I heard my brain resound
like festive shores with female cries and wooden clogs.
For a long time I held my eyelids closed and joyed
in earth and in man's life as in a thrush's song;
but my brains longed for sight, so through half-opened lids
I spied on maids with flowing hair playing by the shore,
tossing their flame-red apples in light, and with long strides
catching them still in flight, their flushed necks glittering in air.
In the maids' midst a nude, cool-bodied princess stood, 251
with hair of honey-gold piled on her new-washed head,
and watched her playmates gamboling on the golden sands.
I swear that these world-wandering, glutted eyes of mine,
blessed to have seen nude G-ddesses on deathless shores,
never before rejoiced in such reed-supple form;
when she was but fourteen so must have flowered, I know,
amid cool oleander blooms, fair Helen's body,
and I said longingly within my salt-caked heart:
'Just such a maid as this must suckle my son's children.' "
Suddenly startled, his son blushed, his temples throbbed.
"Tall lily on far shores, and see, my son's mind dazzles!
Soft silver laughter, gleaming throats, and fragrant apples,
hands that resist, then open, then softly close again--
O may the night not drain its hours, may dawns be dark,
and may he hear those flaming apple trees asway
in lush warm gardens far away, their sweet fruit falling!"
Suddenly through the mind of the mute quivering youth
a pure love flowed for that rapacious man, his father.
Thus did the two L-rds speak as they lunged down the slope;
a breeze blew freshly, earth was fragrant as after rain,
and perched in ancient olive groves, the lovebirds sighed.
Somewhere high up in heaven's gorges, in the wind's blast,
the stars like molting pure-white flowers in darkness fell;
low on the grass, like constellations, houses gleamed;
lamps stood in doorways suddenly to watch with stealth
the two night prowlers plunging headlong from the palace.
But doors were bolted quickly, clanging in the strange hush;
old women spat thrice past their breasts to ward off evil;
and black dogs thrust their tails between their thighs, and whined.
The stooped house-wrecker in his brine-black heart drank in
the uncivil poisoned welcome of his shameless people
and in his wrathful heart a lightning longing seized him
to fall on his isle ruthlessly and put to the sword
men, women, and G-ds, and on the flaming shores of dawn
scatter to the wide winds the ashes of his own homeland.
Such were the thoughts that whirled in his blood-lapping brain;
his son watched him askance and guessed with dread what
thoughts
swirled in this ruthless stranger who so suddenly swooped,
flung into seething uproar palace, mother, and slaves,
then from his own long locks snatched off the royal crown.
Who was he? His own blood leapt not when he first saw
this grimy stranger crouched in rags, hunched on his threshold;
nor had his mother flung herself on his breast for haven
but in the women's quarter had crouched in speechless dread.
"Speak now with kindness to your loved subjects, father, repress
your rage like a great L-rd, consider that they too
possess a soul, are even a G-d, but know it not."
Thus spoke the son and looked straight in his father's eyes;
but as Odysseus neared the shore and breathed the sea,
his mind grew cool, and soon within his pulsing heart
a white gull soared from far-off seas and flapped its wings.
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"Where are we flying, Father? Stop! My head spins round!"
But as they mounted higher, he felt his shoulder blades
sprout wings of curly down till to his startled eyes
the earth seemed like a tiny hare that browsed on wind;
an eagle's heart rose in his chest, his claws grew hard,
and on the ancient eagle's neck he swayed with pride.
"Father, my wings are strong now, drop me from your claws!"
The ancient eagle shrieked with maniac rage and joy,
beat his enormous wings, opened his branch-thick feet
and hurled his young son headlong through star-burning air.
The young man shrieked in terror, leapt from his low bed,
groped in the dark, and then grew calm: all seemed a dream,
a crazy thought new-hatched in the deceiving night.
But wild sleep now escaped him: all night long he heard
two monstrous eagle wings that beat above his head.
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"In all my wandering voyages and torturous strife,
the earth, the seas, the winds fought me with frenzied rage;
I was in danger often, both through joy and grief,
of losing priceless goodness, man's most worthy face.
I raised my arms to the high heavens and cried for help,
but on my head G-ds hurled their lightning bolts, and laughed.
I then clasped Mother Earth, but she changed many shapes,
and whether as earthquake, beast, or woman, rushed to eat me;
then like a child I gave my hopes to the sea in trust,
piled on my ship my stubbornness, my cares, my virtues,
the poor remaining plunder of G-d-fighting man,
and then set sail, but suddenly a wild storm burst, 1050
and when I raised my eyes, the sea was strewn with wreckage.
As I swam on, alone between the sea and sky,
with but my crooked heart for dog and company,
I heard my mind, upon the crumpling battlements
about my head, yelling with flailing crimson spear, 1055
Earth, sea, and sky rushed backward; I remained alone
with a horned bow slung down my shoulder, shorn of G-ds
and hopes, a free man standing in the wilderness.
Old comrades, O young men, my island's newest sprouts,
I drink not to the G-ds but to man's dauntless mind!"
____________________________________________

"Lads, there's no greater joy upon this desolate earth
than that of the minutest seed the plant lets fall
which with its roots grasps earth and with its head grasps light
and in its passing crumbles rocks and cracks the hills,
and I shall sing this night of that most small, small seed.
The king's grandfather and I, stretched out on lion-pelts,
enjoyed the setting sun from the high palace terrace,
and like the ancient G-ds grown old, we reached our hands
and drank sweet wine, and watched the sea to its far rim.
Just as the sun in blood-red waves stooped to expire,
a pain unbearable began to crush the old man's chest,
and nurses ran and brought, wrapped in gold swaddling clothes,
his precious grandson, lone support and consolation.
O king, he raised you like a burning coal in light
and said: 'Your plowman father wants you to plow land,
and sings you lullabies in fields, rolls you in ruts,
but I plunge you in waves: may you become a pirate!
Your father gives you toys of plows and earthen ox,
but I give you bronze armies and two-bladed swords
and six toy pairs of deathless dwarfish G-ds to play with.
Ahoy, my grandson, grow up quick and resurrect me!'
Then your old grandsire laughed, jounced you on his right knee
and on his left struck at the savage lyre and sang
the monstrous troubles and vast joys of all mankind;
and you, clinging with your plump hands about his neck,
listened, and in your mind bloomed azure foreign shores
till your still tender loins were drenched with sea-swept brine.
One night on a high tower your old grandsire and I
sat sipping wine, bidding farewell to the afterglow,
and our four temples burst their bolts from too much wine;
our souls soared from our bodies, shadows reeled, rooms shook.
Then arm in arm we dashed and reached the women's quarter;
I've not entrusted this to any man: tonight I tell
a deep dark secret of the three great Fates that blessed you.
The lampsteads in the corners dimly glowed, and all
the nurses slept upon their soft warm mattresses;
your old grandfather rushed ahead, his beard flashed fire,
and his white hair fell down his back in waves of light.
He longed to see and touch you with his rugged hands,
for as we'd perched like two humped eagles on the tower,
we'd seen three shadows swiftly dash into the palace:
'Surely those are the Fates,' he cried, 'the Three Great Graces!
Quick, let's defend the royal seed asleep in its cradle!'
But as our eyes discerned your small shape in the dusk,
our hollow knees, O king, gave way and shook with fright:
three savage dragons hung, like swords, over your head!
And I, who night and day consort with G-ds and demons,
whose mind like a high threshing floor corrals the winds,
I saw in the dark and recognized those three great dragons.
First, like a topless cedar tree by lightning seared,
Tantalus stood, forefather of despairing mankind;
with vulturous claws he tore at his voracious chest,
uprooted his abysmal heavy heart, stooped low,
and wedged the graft deep in your own still tender breast;
your cradle blazed as though your entrails had caught fire.
The middle Fate then raised its awesome brow, and I
with trembling recognized Prometheus, the mind's master,
who in his wounded hands, that softly glowed, now held
the seed of a great light, and stooping over your skull
gently unstitched the tender threads, and sowed the seed.
Then the third dragon lit a fire and threw for kindling
huge looms and thrones and G-ds to swell the unsated blaze.
Your grandsire roared and rushed up with his spear, but I
seized him in time, held tight, and whispered in his ear:
'Hold on! These three great Fates are gifting your great grandson!
That dragon with the red locks of a lion's mane 1199
is Heracles, that iron sword, that famous athlete.'
Stumbling, the old man grabbed a column, mute with awe;
and when the soaring conflagration licked the roof,
the dragon seized your infant form, Sung it in flames,
and you flushed crimson, rose like flickering tongues and leapt
to the gilt beams and fluted with the singing blaze.
The whole night through you laughed and played, refreshed in
fire,
and we, struck dumb, rejoiced in your salvation's wonder,
embraced each other tight as our tears flowed in streams.
The first cocks suddenly crowed in courts, and the great dragons
scattered like clouds and vanished in the downy air of dawn."
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As, like a silken thread, the crowd climbed twisted paths,
Telemachus in wrath stalked toward the castle keep
with his two snake-slim hounds to right and left, alone,
and thus provoked his father in his guileless soul:
"My eyes once smarted, sire, to watch the barren waves;
ah, had my fate decreed that you should not appear!
Now that you've come, may you be cursed, may other waves
soon sweep you to the world's far ends of no return.
You set all minds on fire, you plague man's simple heart,
you drive the craftsman from his shop, uproot the plow,
until the country bridegroom wants his bride no more
but longs for travel and immortal Helen's arms."
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But the chief G-d, wrapped up with savage wrath in clouds,
would not permit his mind to drink and thus forget;
stooping above the gold-lipped rim of heaven, he sighed:
'The scales of fate tilt upside-down, earth's at our heels!
I see the archer's wily head stuffed full of brains
and brashness, leaning even on our Olympian walls!'
He spoke, then summoned Death to come before him swiftly,
and he, black crow who browsed replete on Trojan corpses,
flew up to heaven and perched upon the G-d's right hand.
Then murderous Zeus rejoiced to hold his strapping son:
'Good bird, my faithful thought, swoop down and fix your claws
deep in the brazen skull of unabashed Odysseus;
become flame, woman, sea, grind his brash brains to powder!'
He spoke, then in my skull thrust Death like a sharp sword."
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"Then last of all at daybreak, with her white seabirds,
passing with dance and laughter through the rosy mist,
great gracious Aphrodite would caress on earth
our bodies by the shores at rest, now merged in one.
Like the swift beating of an eagle's wings, our days
and nights of love vanished in empty skies above us,
and as I held the Immortal tightly in my arms
I suddenly felt at dusk one day, with speechless dread,
that G-d had spread his tentacles and choked my heart.
The world then seemed a legend, life a passing dream,
the soul of man a spiraling smoke that rose in air;
in my clear head G-ds suddenly were born, blazed up,
as suddenly were lost, and others rose instead
like clouds and fell in raindrops on my sun-scorched mind.
Only my dreams seemed to be living still--they crawled
like many-colored snakes and mutely licked my lids;
seas then unfolded in my brain, rooted in pearls;
within thick waters gold fish gazed upon me sadly,
and from blue depths the sweetest, sweetest voices rose.
My body stretched in length, my arches curved in height,
my head cut through high waves like a curved figurehead
where the road-pointing North Star hung like dangling dew.
My body like a pirate's galley sped nightlong
and all my hold was filled with the earth's fragrant smells.
But my dream swiftly emptied, snakes grew numb with cold,
and my free heart, that could unshape or shape the world,
turned sterile, dead in a divine tranquillity.
Man's passions in my heart were purged and drained away,
my native land was drowned, and shone in Lethe's depths,
till like a play of light and cloud that swayed in wind
my father, wife, and son met, parted, and were lost;
Death rose in a G-d's shape and wrecked my mortal heart.
Unlaughing, painless, mute, I skimmed over the rocks,
for my transparent body cast no shade on earth
and seabirds swiftly darted through my legs, unfearing,
as though a G-d walked on the shores invisibly.
One morning on the barren stones I chanced to trip
on a long piece of wreckage cast up by the waves,
and raised it slowly and strove to think what it might be:
bone of a monstrous fish, leg of a mammoth bird,
or staff of some sea demon, branch of a huge sea tree?
Light slowly filled my mind till in my feeble hands
I saw I held a much-beloved and long-stemmed oar,
and as I stroked it tenderly, my dull eyes cleared:
I saw at the oar's end the sunburnt hand that held it,
I saw the foaming keel and sails of a tall mast,
old comrades came with peeling limbs and crowded round me,
the sea flung in a burst upon me and shook my brains,
and I recalled from where I had come and where I longed to go.
Ah, I too was a mortal soul, my heart was dancing, 150
I had a country, wife, and child, and a swift ship,
but my poor soul was wrecked and lost in a great G-ddess.
I quaked in fear of being made a deathless G-d
without man's springing heart, without man's joys or griefs,
then turned and plunged my wasted face in the cool waves, 155
cast water on my withered lashes to revive them,
smelled the salt seaweed on the shore as my brows burst,
and my head brimmed with light and water, fire and earth,
till my blood flowed, my royal veins began to thaw.
Seizing a cleaving ax, I plunged into the woods, 160
cut down huge trees and split them, matched them, chose a
cypress,
fit planks together, carved long oars, raised up the mast,
--all in a rage of joy--you'd think I hewed and carved
backbone and hands and feet, head, belly, breast and thighs,
as though I built again my G-d-smashed, ravened body. 165
And when my shape had spread at length from stern to prow
and I had stretched Calypso's blue cloak for a mainsail,
O new-carved ship, you sang then like my warbling heart.
What joy to unfurl sail suddenly in the buffeting winds
and, scudding swiftly, shout farewell to your belovèd: 170
'Much do I love and want you, dear, but let me first
mount on my plunging ship, pay out my billowing sails,
as with one hand I hold the tiller for open seas
and with the other wipe departure's tears away.'
New-washed and fragrant by her holy water's well, 175
the G-ddess combed her long immortal hair and sang:
'For the first time I felt my marble thighs aglow
when once they leant against your warm and mortal thighs.
My stone mind softened, my heart beat, and my knees quaked,
my veins brimmed full of milk, I laughed and turned to woman
and held the whole world on my bosom like a baby.'
Her song could cleave a rock in two; it cracked my heart:
'Be still, my heart, I know, but the mind aims elsewhere.'
Then as I sped like arrows on the foam-peaked waves
and her song dwindled sadly in the twilight's mist,
my ship, grown heavy, slowly sank to its low rim,
for loved shades crushed it, weighed with country, son, and wife,
till I set free my heart to follow as it wished
and it broke down in tears and turned human again!"

Odysseus spoke no more and gazed into the fire,
but in his heart he voyaged still without a word:
islands sprang up in his far mind, moons glowed and swayed,
the rigging in his memory creaked, and his dark head
thundered above the waves like a wild mountain's peak.
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"With twisted hands and thighs we rolled on burning sands,
a hanging mess of hissing vipers glued in sun!
Slowly my speech turned mute within me, hearth-flames choked,
the infected mind, weighed down with flesh, plunged in my guts,
for just as insects slowly sink and drown in amber,
so in my turbid mind beasts, trees, and mortals sank.
In time my heart was battered to a mess of fat
where passions flared and vanished in a torpid daze
till we plunged, grunting, deep into a bestial pit.
I lay well fitted in foul flesh, while man's great cares,
his hopes, flames and ascensions flew in scattering air."
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"G-d, if this is our country, the mind has many skills
to rip it up with all its roots and build a prow!"
He spoke, then twirled the spindle of his mind once more:
"One day as I lay grunting in my fleshly sty,
I saw a light smoke rising on the shore, a fire,
and round it squatted men who with slit rushes pierced
a row of fish and roasted them on glowing coals.
A woman with a baby at her bosom stooped,
unbared her breasts till her son grasped her nipples tight,
and she refreshed him like a fountain of pure milk.
As the fish reddened and their fragrance smote the nostrils,
the fishermen pressed round the fire and sat cross-legged,
and when the mother came with outstretched hands, they filled
her palms with double portions of black bread and fish.
They ate with greed, munched silently, and watched the sea,
then wiped their long mustaches, tipped their flasks of wine,
drank deep, passed it from man to man, last to the mother.
O poor immortal comforts: fish, some bread and wine,
the blue sea stretched before you as you slowly munch
and feel your spirit fortified, your flesh renewed!
I felt, dear G-d, that I myself once knew such joy.
After the meal, they raised their hands to burning skies 355
and the glad mother swayed her torso right and left
and poured into the air a slow sweet lullaby.
The words fell emptily and sank in my mind's marsh
but I received the sweet sounds in my breast, and there
the parched and thick-skinned leaves of my heart trembled. 360
With pain I struggled to recall as my chest heaved:
great courtyards, vineyards, ancient olive trees and fig,
a marble-throated woman that suckled my only son--
oho, to climb a mountain peak, to shout and yell!
Then all at once my throat swelled and my neck veins burst; 365
tears brought me near you once again, O race of man.
Once more I hewed the forest, carved out new-shaped wings,
oars, sails and masts so that the soul might rise for flight;
once more, O joy, winds blessed my sails, and I swept free!
The man-enflaming, high-rumped maid screamed on the shore, 370
the leopards leapt like flames about her, flicked their tails,
and all the sun-washed bodies called from burning sands:
'Where are you going, to the crags of man, to the cliffs of his
mind?
Where are you going, beautiful body, smashed like a jug?
My breast is your native land, for no matter where you go,
you'll not find such a tranquil port, such sweet oblivion.
The soul of woman is very sweet, for it is filled with flesh!'

Shrill sounds and passion's exclamations slowly faded
as in the fiery sunlight the sandy harbor vanished.
All day I sailed to windward, and my vessel beat
like a poor human heart escaped from the jaws of death;
at night the heavens glowered and filled with lightning bolts,
the sea clutched at the sky, sea-demons danced on billows,
and their harsh laughter burst about my head and roared.
I heard them quarreling how to seize and share amongst them
like vultures, my strong ribs, my brains, my eyes, my entrails,
but with my ship for shield, I fought them breast to breast
and held on tightly to keep flesh and bone together.
But in the frenzied dawn the searing lightning smashed
my sails and planking, and I plunged in roaring waves
and grit my teeth to keep my fainting soul from drowning.
I cut through all the flooding waves with wide breast strokes
until my hands at daybreak hooked on jagged rocks.
Oho, firm land, I've seized you and plant roots once more!
Laughing and crying, I kissed the earth and stretched on stones,
and it was then Death's sweetest face rose to confront me."
____________________________________________

Many the silver moons that rose and fell and played
in changing skies like round full suns or slender scythes.
Grapes in the vineyards reddened, stalks of wheat grew golden,
ripe figs at noon dripped with sweet honey on the earth,
heat swelled, young girls grew pale, their armpits smelled of
musk,
and the mind-spinner held time in his salty hands
like fruit, like pomegranates or green grapes, and waited.
He stood by his bronze gate and listened to the sea
as in his mind his vessel leapt like shoals of fish;
his wretched wife urged all her frightened slaves to sing
their sweetest songs and drown the roar of beckoning seas,
but he already stood by sails and watched the waves;
his feasting boards were spread with air, sea, birds, and sounds.
____________________________________________

"It's time that love and tranquil peace should rule on earth.
The greatest dowries are the sun, rain, trees, and soil;
now let the loving pair play a brief hour on earth."
____________________________________________

But the impatient king broke in upon the songster:
"I also have roamed foreign shores, fought G-ds and men,
I've even mounted, it seems to me, your crimson steeds.
Now, by the sword I wear, I too concede no boundaries!"
The old bard turned his head and spoke with bitterness:
"The world is wider than Calypso's cave, Odysseus,
and deeper than black Circe's dense and curly pit.
Athena's helmet, boys, has now been smashed to bits
nor can it ever again contain the whole world's head.
All the strong G-ds you met on your slight voyages
are smoke that rises from a L-rd's contented roof
or the long shadow of a startled slave at nightfall.
I know a living land whose entrails are still burning,
where still the bull-sun mounts her like a cow each dawn;
her G-d is well knit, formed of sturdy flesh and bone
and stands guard at his boundaries with black, iron swords.
He hungers, and when meat is scarce, invents new wars
and beats on iron pans to marshal all his tribes;
he feeds his buffaloes and stallions all alone,
and all alone smears his pronged arrowheads with poison,
and by himself keeps sentry duty all night long.
He's not a G-d to place his trust in rotting man;
he knows men well, they can't hold out, they fret and fall.
Like soldiers, maids and youths stand by their tents in fear
as he inspects them like a general every dawn,
prodding them silently in shoulders, knees, and loins,
and when he finds one profitless for war or plow,
with his mute sword he slits that useless throat at once;
hold your mind high, O king, this cruel G-d suits you well!
Forgive me, friends; heavy's the speech I've flung tonight;
my lips had longed to deck you with gay wedding songs,
to wish this loving couple life and ripe old age
that in their hands life's withered branch might bloom and bear,
but suddenly on the threshold bent, ablaze with light,
I saw the still unsated bow of cruelty aimed!
Aye, hunter, do not waste your time on scraggly birds
but keep your spirit unspent for great Necessity!"
He spoke, and when he set his heavy lyre down,
a bellowing rose as though a bull had crashed on tiles.
The pale king leant against the doorjamb, lest he fall,
and felt ashamed before the bard, for the world swelled,
and in the dark his wild brows creaked and grew immense.
____________________________________________

"Lay down your futile arms, turn back and take your bride,
it's time you climbed the nuptial couch and slept embraced;
I should not like to stain your marriage wreaths with blood."
His son frowned wrathfully, then tensed his knees and yelled:
"I won't live in your shade--do you hear?--to rot and wither!"
The startled father seized his angry son with joy:
"My son, flare up again that I may see you well!
In our black parting now, this is my greatest joy:
your eyebrows flame with rage, your flesh is still my flesh!"
The son then looked unfearing in his father's eyes:
how they flashed fire and laughter! deep in their irises
he saw a rearing lion that licked its whelp with love.
His mind's foundations shook; for the first time his heart
leapt up before this man to acknowledge him as father,
but he restrained his joy nor reached a hand to touch him.
Odysseus placed both hands on his son's shoulder blades:
"Forward, my son; this is a good time for us to part.
At daybreak I'll set sail and leave my native land;
take all my island with its flocks of sheep and men,
it's yours, and wear it in your hair, a crown of stone.
I'd like to leave you now a final testament,
but, by my soul, I can't find what fine words to say!
What should I wish you? That you stifle here on stone
and gaze with longing on far waves while your heart burns,
or that you plant roots here thrice-deep and never move?
What shame to give you blessing now or sound advice!
Let your soul fly with freedom, and let come what may!"
He spoke no more, and in his fists, as in farewell,
clasped tight his deeply moved son firmly by the arm.
But all at once the archer's mocking laughter broke:
"It seems I'll never look on your face again, my son;
now see if you can't spread your hands to blot me out,
an ancient debt all sons discharge to ease their hearts."
He spoke, then from the wall took down his heavy bow
for he already had set sail on his new voyage.
His son returned to the courts and said good night with grace
to gentry and lowborn to end the wedding feast,
and then approached and touched his wife's sun-lily hand
and helped her tenderly to mount the holy stairs.
____________________________________________

Odysseus took them to his castle's secret rooms:
"Fill your sacks full with flour and wine, plunder my weapons,
grab what we need, better or worse, for a long voyage."
He spoke, and cast his eyes round his own house to rob it.
When at long last the plundering ceased, he gave commands:
"Before day breaks, let's place our ship on rollers, lads,
uproot our country from our hearts, and say farewell;
let those who can, throw her behind them like a stone,
let those who can't, hang her about them like a charm;
at dawn we sail for the last voyage of no return."
____________________________________________

In the dull, somber, morning air, as the earth steamed,
Granite appeared on the steep sheepfold's winding path,
dragging a huge white ram behind him that the crew
might eat, drink, and take heart in their departure's hour.
The archer laughed and grinned from ear to ear, then rose,
rolled up his sleeves and lit a fire, then slew the ram
and hung the hairy head with its curved, twisted horns
high on the topmost mast to serve for luck and lookout.
At last when the meat reddened on the spit and gleamed,
they washed their hands in the salt sea, stretched on the sand,
and glutton spoke as the fat grease dripped down his neck:
"Brothers, I'm seized with heartfelt pity, so hear me out:
whatever man won't eat--dung, bone, meat-smoke, and hair--
let's throw to the great G-ds for alms, who faint with hunger!"
The dragons laughed till their necks swelled, then called the G-ds
to stand about their feast like dogs and lick the bones;
but their dark master rose, his fists weighed down and sagging
with the great ram's soft brains and fertile testicles;
with throbbing heart he plunged his gaze deep in the earth
then cried out till his dread grandfather stirred in his guts:
"Potent forefather, come alive once more, rise up and eat!"
____________________________________________

G-d sent a gentle shower on earth to cool with balm
the hairy fists that pulled at oars in the open sea.
All kept their silent faces turned toward their loved island;
fragrance of wild thyme drifted down the mountain slopes,
odor of vines and ripening grain, and smothered their minds; 5
the mountain partridges came down to drink, and all
the glimmering valley glades soon rang with their harsh cackling.
Amid the hazy light of dawn, its feet wrapped up in mist,
their sacred island softly smiled, a babe awakening.
Perched on the mountain slopes, the hamlets gleamed with light, 10
bells softly sang like birds or cool cascading waters,
and suddenly unrestrained, with patient threnody,
as though the whole earth sighed, a cow's deep lowing rang.
A smooth land breeze blew softly, and the mainsail flapped
until the pointed ship leapt like a huge dolphin 15
with two enormous eyes that stared from the wet prow,
and the azure-painted tail rose proudly over the billows.
But when the cape was finally rounded, the sweet sounds
of women singing rang like bells from rose-lit caves;
they sang, and all the seashore wailed like widowed maids 20
swept up by saddening memories as they watched the waves.
Then Captain Clam shaded his eyes with his rough hands
and gazed with dancing heart far out upon the crags.
Once in his youth at sea he'd heard a tune like this
when he was bringing home his bride for the first time. 25
G-d laughed then over the waves, and all the pebbles laughed,
the sails swelled like the groom's own heart, and the new bride
to greet her husband's native land that loomed so strangely.
____________________________________________

But Hardihood saw flames, and Granite, unicorns,
and the dream-taken piper heard his native land
that whimpered like a woman on the sands abandoned,
stoning the veering waves with bitter lamentation.
Drawing his pipe, he played a sprightly dancing tune,
blew hard and puffed away his sun-drenched native land
as though it were a tallow-faced and cobwebbed ghost.
Steering his rudder far from land, without a word,
Odysseus wound his island slowly about his brain,
uprooting houses, mountains, sheepfolds, harbors, trees,
till all rolled tumbling down the funnel of his mind
as memory tore them up and swallowed his whole island.
But when his shore and native land fled from his eyes,
his heart contracted and a bitter sorrow crushed him:
"Comrades, our eyes shall never look on her again!
She was a small, small bird that passed, a toy that broke,
a sprig of curly basil fallen from over our ears."
____________________________________________

Dusk fell, the foaming waters to the sky's far rim
reddened like coppery wine, and tipsy Hesperus
rose up to dance upon the gold and crimson waves.
____________________________________________

The lizard glued its belly to the earth in bliss,
the cypress raised its slender length from the white ground,
and in the cricket's careless head the whole field burned;
the sun, like a lean leopard pounced and prowled around
the ripe grain, olive groves, the two friends sprawled in shade,
till suddenly the archer turned to his friend with love:
"O Menelaus," he cried with throbbing voice and heart,
"let's leave at once! Abandon all these vines and fields!
Youth blooms upon our temples twice! Death comes once more
to take the lead--let's follow him no matter where!
Though no sweet woman's body waits where Death's road ends,
new higher castles rise, my friend, new higher cares!"
He spoke, then leaning closer, gripped his comrade's knees,
and he but turned his wine-dazed head toward the tree's bole:
"I'm tired; I'd like to rest a moment on the grass."
But the home-wrecker crouched like a mad, snapping dog
and growled between his teeth in rage, "Then I'll snatch Helen!"
Yet, as he spoke, he wryly smiled and swept the field:
"I was born yesterday, by G-d, and I shall die today;
the earth has time enough to stand and chew her cud:
with eons before her and behind, what does she care?
We come and go like flames: 'Good morning' and 'Good night.'
Great joy to him who grasps the lightning flash in time!"
He spoke, then shook his spirit free from dizziness
and leant against the olive tree to plan the seizure;
but all at once he lay stark still with staring eyes
and gazed on the tree's bark where a cocooned cicada
struggled and slowly squirmed to pierce through into light.
Stretched on the ground, Odysseus watched and held his breath.
Like a warm body buried alive, wrapped up in shrouds,
the poor worm twitched to pierce through its translucent tomb
in a mute, heavy war with death, till the archer stooped
and with his warm breath tried to help the writhing soul.
Then lo! a small nape suddenly slit the shroud in two,
and like a budded vine leaf, soft and curly, poked
a blind, unhardened head in light, swayed gropingly,
then strengthened soon in sun and took on form and color.
It stretched its neck and struggled, crawled from its white sheath,
unglued its soft feet from its belly, clutched with bliss
the tree's gray bark, then slowly stretched its body taut
until its fledgling wings unfurled and shimmered in air.
The honey-pale cicada basked in the simmering sun,
and the three rubies on its brow burst in three flames
as it plunged deeper still in the world's warmth and scent.
Fixing its glassy, greedy eyes on the tree's foliage,
its soft smoke-silver body overbrimmed with song
yet made no sound, enraptured still by sun and light
and the huge joy of birth as on earth's sill it stood
before it entered, speechless, numb with the world's wonders.
The man of many passions quaked and mutely watched
how the soul pokes through earth and squirms out of its shroud;
and thus the world, he thought, crawls like a worm to sun,
and thus the mind, in time, bursts like a withered husk
from which there spring, time after time, new finer thoughts
until the ultimate great thought leaps forward: Death.
Then as the subtle man lay on the ground and brooded,
he heard the king scream in his sleep and leap awake:
"As I slept here on grass, a dread dream crushed me, brother:
I dreamt we sauntered on the earth together, arm in arm;
crimson carnations sprang up from our steaming steps,
our words soared high like eagles in the crystal air,
but my eyes turned to clay and suddenly spilled on grass."
The murderer shivered and his heart was clogged with blood,
but he restrained himself and gently touched his friend:
"The lances of the sun were hot and heavy this noon;
let's rise and cool our hearts high on the mountain's ridge."
____________________________________________

"I know of only one great joy on earth, O king:
to sit well washed and watch the beauty of noble youth."
____________________________________________

But the archer looked with longing on the burgeoning youths
and thought, "If only these wild bodies were all mine!
G-d, I'd let loose my lion-soul on them to do
all that I've left undone on land or sea or mind.
How can one withered body do all the heart desires?"
____________________________________________

"Only the strongest spirit has the firm right to rule!
If you want to hold Sparta, then your mind and strength
must far surpass all other Spartan minds and strengths.
If you but crack, then give your throne at once to your betters!"
The pallid king complained to his ungentle friend:
"Only a G-d may utter such unmerciful words,
for only the Immortals know not downfall or old age.
Aren't you afraid that soon one day your mind and knees
will suddenly buckle, too, and fall to earth decayed?
Then a young man shall come and make you eat your words!"
The savage athlete's mouth turned to a bitter smile:
"Old friend, I battle night and day never to fall;
I look on youth as on my strongest sons and foes,
and they watch me impatiently with greed and search
my eyes for signs of dullness and my teeth for rot
and if my mind still stands erect on battle's peak.
But if a young man ever should come and make me quail,
then I'll rise up at once myself, give him my throne,
and like a moribund old octopus drag down
my tentacles to the sea's deepest pit, and croak there!"
The king was struck with terror, and all at once his flesh
and old bones melted in the slant sun's spidery snares.
Night brimmed with soft caresses, waters filled with shade,
the first faint stars struck fire, and the slender moon
hung from night's collar like a sacred amulet.
The lion stalked its prey and yawned with rumbling growls,
and far away on snowy peaks, in lichened woods,
knock-kneed and shaggy bears swirled in lightfooted dance.
Hunger and Eros prowled through mountain passes then
and softly slunk in hamlets, knocked on every door,
till boys and girls met slyly in delirious night
to tell each other lovers' tales, and shadows rolled
entangled on the ground, by lickerish night devoured.
____________________________________________

But the king groaned, for such need seemed but bitter balm:
"Alas, my mind rejects the thought, my heart can't bear
to touch and talk with its old friend and then to turn
and find him suddenly vanished in the empty air."
The demiG-d then pitied his ill-fated friend:
"Brother, all life's a dream; don't let your heart grow bitter.
Troy rose once in our brains like a resplendent toy
fashioned of mud and women, slaughters and far shores
that we gulped down like a deep cup of maddening wine
till our minds reeled and set their sails for open seas.
Don't let the mocking spirit of wine deceive you, friend;
it's not true that we once set out with our swift ships,
that for ten years we fought to take that famous town
or that one night its dust was strewn in air like smoke;
all these were monstrous phantoms, playthings of the brain.
The mind of giddy man sways but in slight commotion
and fashions shores and castles, G-ds, sweet bodies, ships,
and on the highest peak of all its wealth enthrones its Helen.
These creatures shine like mist a moment in our minds
then fade from sight abruptly when a small breath blows."
____________________________________________

The eyes of the seductress gleamed like showering lights;
"How can the shallow brain of mortals, O sage man,
separate vapid truth from dream, or mist from mist?
Both life and death are rich, intoxicating wines.
Was it then I who laughed and wept on Trojan shores,
or but my empty shade, and I in my husband's bed
dreaming of seizures, handsome youths, and gallant deeds?
Even now, as we sit here beside our peaceful hearth,
the mind grows blurred, the dream blows and the palace creaks
like a full-masted sloop and sails in the wind's arms."
____________________________________________

These were not waves, nor this a scudding ship they rowed,
but they were wandering leaf by leaf a fragrant rose
till all their thighs and bellies filled with pollened gold.
____________________________________________

Then a slim peddler, smelling of rank musk and goat,
slid near the arch-eyed lady, and slowly in the sun 545
unwrapped in waves a rich-embroidered magic robe.
Black, white, and crimson horses dashed about its field,
and kings astride them bent their bows with golden darts
and shot slim green-blue beasts amid wild cypress groves,
and all around its hem rolled cool cascading waves. 550
Helen was dazzled like a quail, and shut her eyes,
but the old corsair bowed and said with lilting voice:
"I've traveled round the tree of earth, and yet I swear
I've never seen such beauty in a mortal maid.
Oho, who lies beside you longs for sleep in vain!"
____________________________________________

The shoulders then of sun-born Helen began to shake
until the old oriental codger stooped and smiled:
"Don't let your lips, those red carnations, tremble, lady;
the Bull-G-d gulped our kings only in ancient times,
for now they've learned to be on good terms with the G-ds
and climb unruffled toward them, bearing golden towers,
for learn, the G-ds are merchants now and strike hard bargains."
He spoke, then from his bosom dragged an ivory G-d
with seven towering heads piled on each other, worn
by myriads of caressing hands and pilgrim lips.
Odysseus grabbed at the ivory wonder eagerly;
the seven heads all swayed, and seven-colored flames
rose in his mind as with his finger tips he stroked
and gently licked with slow caresses each strange head.
Time shut its wings for a brief moment and stood still
so that the lone mind could have ample time to climb
with skillful fingers all the rungs of mortal virtues.
Below, the most coarse head, a brutal base of flesh,
swelled like a bloated beast bristling with large boar-tusks,
and it was fortified with veins as thick as horns.
Above it, like a warrior's crest, the second head
clenched its sharp teeth and frowned with hesitating brows
like one who scans his danger, quakes before death's door,
but in his haughty pride still feels ashamed to flee.
The third head gleamed like honey with voluptuous eyes,
its pale cheeks hallowed by the flesh's candied kisses,
and a dark lovebite scarred its he-goat lips with blood.
The fourth head lightly rose, its mouth a whetted blade,
its neck grew slender and its brow rose tall as though
its roots had turned to flower, its meat to purest mind.
The fifth head's towering brow was crushed with bitter grief,
deep trenches grooved it, and its flaming cheeks were gripped
with torturous arms as by a savage octopus;
it bit its thin lips hopelessly to keep from howling.
Above it shone serenely the last head but one,
and steadfast weighed all things, beyond all joy or grief,
like an all-holy, peaceful, full-fed, buoyant spirit.
It gazed on Tartarus and the sky, a slight smile bloomed
like the sun's subtle afterglow on faded lips;
it sauntered on the highest creviced peaks of air
where all things seem but passing dream and dappled mist;
and from its balding crown, that shone like a smooth stone
battered by many flooding seas and licked by cares,
there leapt up like unmoving flame the final head,
as if it were a crimson thread that strung the heads
like amber beads in rows and hung them high in air.
The final head shone, crystal-clear, translucent, light,
and had no ears or eyes, no nostrils, mouth, or brow,
for all its flesh had turned to soul, and soul to air!
Odysseus fondled all the demon's seven souls 630
as he had never fondled woman, son, or native land.
"Ah, my dear G-d, if only my dark soul could mount
the seven stories step by step and fade in flame,
but I'm devoured by beasts and filled with mud and brain!"
____________________________________________

Idomeneus placed then in a goldsmith's hand
a ball of solid gold, large as an infant's head,
to carve G-d's blessing richly on a holy rhyton.
He ordered the skilled goldsmith to remember all:
"G-d stood on high and I stood straight on earth before him,
the great sun hung low to my right, the full moon left,
so that their double beams met in my dazzled eyes.
G-d spread his hands and gave into my trust the firm
round disk of earth with all its souls and mighty laws.
I did not move, and held the whole world in my palms;
G-d questioned, and I stared straight in his eyes and answered.
I questioned too, and he replied like a true friend.
Gather your wits, O goldsmith, teach your crafty hands
how to immortalize this meeting in pure gold.
Make infinite what lasted but a lightning flash on earth!"
He spoke, dismissed the goldsmith with a regal gesture,
then turning slowly with his half-shut snaky eyes,
suddenly hissed, and hailed the royal pair before him:
"Great is the Bull-G-d's joy this holy night to take
and taste in his wide mouth sun-lovely radiant Helen;
even though Chance is blind, G-d leads her by the hand.
Welcome, tall lily of the air, immaculate flower,
that you may also hang from the G-d's golden horns."
His mocking eyes gazed downward on the cunning man
but his soul trembled, for his mind divined some evil:
"Quite well do I recall your slanting sea-capped head;
somewhere on neighboring beaches once we met by fate--
you were a common shepherd, then, in a poor farm;
yet got to be the frequent comrade of great kings
because your crafty brains gave birth to wiles and tricks."
But the quick-tempered man reined in his heart and brain
and soothed his mind, recalling how in the dread cave
he stood erect before the one-eyed monster, Cyclops,
and in clay basins poured out wine for that tricked brute.
"Hold tight your miseries, O my heart, and lick your leash,
put on a pleasing face, smile now and pour with skill
the new bright wine you bear here: Helen's wanton eyes."
The nimble-fingered weaver chose what woof to weave
and signaled with his eyes to her for whom Troy fell,
and she with fear ascended the throne's golden steps,
and with her rose and flickered that great lady, Fire.
____________________________________________

Gold as a wedding ring, the holy moment hung
with heaviness, while mortals quaked, poor rustling reeds
that G-d adjusted to his lips and played like flutes.
____________________________________________

At this same hour on a far coast a fisher spread
his tattered dragnets and began to mend them slowly,
nor felt concerned for Helens, bullfights, or great kings,
for here his whole wealth was composed of sea, a boat,
and eyes that once roamed far but now were moored to land.
Life was a short run on the sea, a boat packed full
of dragnets, lobster traps, and octopus harpoons.
We load our nets on board, the sails are set at dawn,
a handful of smelts hooked, a bowl of fishstew sipped,
and there goes life, a shipwreck plunged to the sea's bottom.
____________________________________________

"My brethren, you were slaked and gladdened with G-d's presence!
He comes down like a shining bull to mount the earth
then plays at games and dancing with all mortal men.
He holds us gently on his horns, licks us with love,
and lets us wound his sacred flanks with our sharp goads,
but suddenly when he deigns to play with us no more,
he tosses his sharp horns and scatters all our brains!"
____________________________________________

As he was speaking, on the river's edge appeared
the virgin Mountain Maidens bearing jars of water
to wash poor Krino and sanctify the harlot earth.
But when they reached the arena's edge, they stood still, mute,
for Phida leapt before them with torn, ash-strewn hair
grimy with coal dust, filthy blood on her bared bosom.
And when she saw the maidens bearing the holy water,
singing slow hymns and spells for the polluted earth,
she thrust her hands upon her hips and shrilled with laughter:
"Hey, welcome, mountain ladies, you pure virgin mules,
lugging your jars of water to wash the harlot earth!
Root up the river with all its roots, go turn it off
its course, but there's no washing pure the whorish earth;
not water, but flaming blood will cleanse the sullied world!"
Hidden behind a column, the two friends admired
the viperish soul that hissed and thrashed with rage on earth.
Her thighs, her clothes, her hair were thickly smeared with coal
dust,
a lion rolled in embers of a shepherd's fire.
She raised her hands, laughed harshly, and approached the maids:
"You think that with good hearts, virginity, and water
the lewd earth can be saved and not a knife stabbed through her!
Fire must fall from all four winds to save our souls!"
She spoke, and bitter froth now edged her scornful lips,
her eyes flung streams of fire that licked the palace walls,
her nostrils flared, but she grew calm and clapped her hands:
"I smell a honeyed fragrance till my bowels swoon!
I'm starved! All Crete roasts like a partridge on my hearth!"
She laughed, then dashed into the courtyards, spread her hands
and placed them on invisible forms, on shadowy dancers,
struck up a dance and stamped on earth with naked feet.

She leapt on stones as though G-d whipped her with his fire,
she was a green and frothing branch that squirmed in flame,
and her red hair burned in the courts in blazing streams.
____________________________________________

Death came and stretched full length along the archer's side;
weary from wandering all night long, his lids were heavy,
and he, too, longed to sit and sleep awhile beside
his old friend near the river, by a willow's shade.
Throwing his bony arms across the archer's chest,
he and his boon companion slowly sank in sleep.
Death slept and dreamt that man indeed, perhaps, existed,
that houses rose on earth, perhaps, kingdoms and castles,
that even gardens rose and that beneath their shade
court ladies strolled in languor and handmaidens sang.
He dreamt there was a sun that rose, a moon that shone,
a wheel of earth that turned and every season brought,
perhaps, all kinds of fruit and flowers, cooling rain and snow,
and that it turned once more, perhaps, till earth renewed.
But Death smiled secretly in sleep for he knew well
this was but dream, a dappled wind, toy of his weary mind,
and unperturbed, allowed this evil dream to goad him.
But slowly life took courage, and the wheel whirled round,
earth gaped with hunger, sun and rain sank in her bowels,
unnumbered eggs hatched birds, the world was filled with
worms,
until a packed battalion of beasts, men and thoughts
set out and pounced on sleeping Death to eat him whole.
____________________________________________

Thoughts, castles, men and deeds piled in his mind like fruit
that fall in the night's quiet, lush and overripe.
____________________________________________

After she wrote her dark grief on the ivory plaque,
she hung it by the window in the drizzling rain
and slowly her lament began to melt, to flow,
until it reddened her white harem wall like dripping blood.
____________________________________________

"Dear friend, I swear that this great hand of yours won't shake
when it shall thrust voracious flames in the ships' holds,
although you too may vanish, body and soul I love!
But I don't mind, I'll choke my pain, for I know well
that life is not man's highest or even his noblest good."
____________________________________________

The cypress trees along the sea held up the sky,
and in their shade the pale king staggered with slow steps
to cast in waves his gold and mystical wedding ring.
His silver fish-scales glittered in the seashore's glare,
and as he stretched his hands above the waves he seemed
like a breast-plated crab with heavily armored claws.
For a long time the ring above the waters hung
as the sea's bosom swelled with quivering domed arcades,
and all her boundless feminine body moaned with lust.
Then the sperm suddenly fell, the deep womb gaped and closed,
the people roared, the exhausted king fell in a faint,
held up by waiting perfumed arms, his dim eyes glazed,
and his heart groaned like an old bull dragged to the slaughter-
shed.

Life, brothers, is a crimson spangle on night's mantle.
Who is it, G-d, that sits in dark with dexterous hands
until embossed embroideries rise: blooms, cypress trees,
wild partridges with crimson claws, small sunburnt men?
Then all become unstitched and fall, rise new again
and open twisting paths of bordering cypress trees,
and thus the embroidery goes from cliff to cliff once more.____________________________________________

"We've moored, friends, by the mightiest river on all earth.
Its wellhead, like G-d's own, is hidden, dark, untouched;
some think it springs from the sky and falls like cataracts,
others, that earth's own entrails burst to give it birth,
others descend it from the high snow-covered mountains;
no one has seen as yet its deathless swaddling clothes.
Three men once vowed to row their life long toward the south:
white-haired grandfather, sturdy son, and downy grandson.
After ten years, the grandfather died with oars in hand,
and his son thrust him deep in earth and seized the oars;
he passed through towns, waste valleys, rains, and scorching
heat,
his hands froze at the oars, his hair turned snowy white,
but still the river flowed and seemed to have no end.
Then after forty years he sighed and crossed his oars:
'I'm dying, dear son, receive my blessing, take up my oars,
and don't give up these weapons, drink at the spring's root!'
The grandson cast his father in the stream and clawed
both oars, then all alone rowed on the deathless waters.
For forty years he rowed until his hands grew numb;
he went from stubbornness to spite, his mind forged on:
'Where will you take me? You've eaten father and grandfather
too,
but I shall drink your deathless water one day, for spite!'
Long rows of years, like caravans, drifted down the banks,
the young man's mouth gaped toothless, his hair thinned and fell,
his legs grew crooked and his fingers stank with wounds,
but still the exhaustless endless stream poured from the south
and like a date leaf his prow sailed the infinite tide.
And when on the stooped grandson hopeless old age fell
and death approached, he crossed the oars on his thin knees
and brine flowed from his salty eyes and stained his cheeks.
'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!
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.' "
____________________________________________

The host then spoke with noble grace to his great guests:
"A stranger always bears the face of the unknown G-d;
strangers, thrice welcome to my humble hut today."
Peace brimmed on all their faces till the harsh sea-battlers
felt shamed to eat and breathe beneath that guileless roof.
The captain answered the old man in a soft voice:
"Many great virtues deck the steadfast heart of man:
to love the worthy friend and kill the hated foe,
to ache for wretched womankind, to fear no G-d,
but I don't think there's a more warm, sweet-blooded virtue
than to submit your home and heart to passing strangers."
____________________________________________

A distance off, the archer smoothed a place to sleep, 780
but his blood seethed and sped like sleepless roaring streams.
For hours he fought off sleep in his clay threshing floor
because he had no wish to exchange his life for dreams
and longed to snatch more hours from tax-collecting Death,
but his mind dimmed and sank like setting stars at sea. 785
He drowned in sleep, and the ghost of the Sun City seized him
till like a frisking dwarf, a guileless snake, he drove
ahead like a dream-driven sleeper and slid in earth.
Not even a breast's light breathing nor the song of birds:
his soul like a slim flame flicked on his body's wick 790
until he felt his mind detach itself, then fade
and enter like a pilgrim in a marble-studded town.
The towers, tombs and homes shone dimly like dull pearls,
snakes drowsed in tangled coils, and slimy bloated worms
drooped over doorways in long rows and decked the yards. 795
Most gentle and compassionate now, with shriveled flames,
the sun hung over Hades like a flickering lamp;
it spread its beams, and each ray like a human hand
with five long fingers lovingly caressed the world
till seeds, worms, waters shuddered with intense delight 800
and dead men stood in their low doorways, raised their hands,
and the light pierced their hollow chests as though through glass.
____________________________________________

The great tomb-treader screamed and jumped among the ruins;
the sun had risen already a half-oar's length and turned
the waters crimson as the thick light licked the sands
and hungry herons lined the riverbanks and stooped
for minnows, motionless, without the slightest sound.
Like a black-seeded sunflower by the riverside
the heavy vision weighed in the archer's aching palm,
the wind played round him and his shoulders shook as though
a swarm of spirits touched him with their downy wings.
____________________________________________

He spoke, then sat cross-legged and sank in brooding thought;
his mind bloomed like a thorny thistle on a cliff's edge,
ruthless, alone, with one untouched pure drop of honey
hid in its thorns, and he rejoiced in his great secret.
Days moved on sluggishly like wide banana leaves,
the nights stretched out beside them like cool Negresses,
the desert crawled on its starved belly, a fierce tiger,
and the crew shuddered, but the border-guard rejoiced,
for deep inside he felt cool wells, greenswards, and laughter,
and from his brain the mighty cloven river rolled
like a wide blood-vein round his temples, his thick neck,
his chest and thighs, and laved him and refreshed him wholly.


Like a huge lobster with red claws that seethed with wrath,
the sun boiled up next day, simmered on the hot sands
till date trees leapt in the red light like fountaining flame.
To give his weary oarsmen courage, their coxswain yelled:
"Take heart, my lads, the Holy City is not far off; 1026
I smell huge highways, noble mansions, fragrant groves,
and there upon that distant hill, huge dragon-columns;
I prick my ears up and the crowded streets resound
as though a beehive dropped on this broad stream, and broke."
____________________________________________

The archer shook with fear to gaze on the great strength
of that dread element with its thickened fertile flood,
but thought with pride of that other element, the mind:
"I'm only a small reed on the bank of that dark G-d
who overflows and mounts our mother, Earth, but yet
on the reed's thinnest point, on the pure flower of flesh,
all this great river like a dewdrop hangs and trembles."
____________________________________________

Pharaoh turned hoarse with shouting at both G-ds and men,
then took his soft spear once again, his pointed reed,
smoothed his wax tablets with his hand, rubbed out his song
till from his slender backbone a new poem rose.
Now in his peril the whole world sprang in his breast
like the last light that plays on mountain peaks at dusk,
and all at once his slender reed took wing, and flew:

"Life is but air, mist, dream, a dew on the wet ground,
and War a flaming cloud with harsh hail impregnated,
an evening ship of air that sails with tranquil calm
on the tall heads of men and the round breasts of women.
And I'm but air, mist, dream, and the black sun shall come
and that black rooster, Death, shall crow, and I shall vanish too."

The sun, like a slain head, rolled slowly down the sands,
deep azure mists rose thickly by the river's edge,
and the light vanished sadly on the yellow banks.

The star-grains brimmed on the black fields, and the vast sky
like full-winged mills began to grind in the grim darkness.
Wild fawns slunk to their water-holes with quivering hearts,
the famished jackal dug among the poor men's tombs,
and night-G-ds calmly wrapped in fresh vine leaves all boys
who had just died, then crouched to eat them on the sands.
____________________________________________

"Yes, by our iron G-d, we swear: half yours, half ours!
Lead on, show us the way, great is our conquering G-d;
he sits enthroned in a thick reed and burns the world,
oho, he starves, and smells man's meat on every side!"
____________________________________________

"Fellows, the thing I've loved best in this cozening world
is that most crafty myth, man's own deceiving mind
which ties a thin red string about the world's round reel
then with a kick unwinds and sets the great myth spinning!"

Broad-bottomed glutton wryly laughed and spun his yarn:
"Ah, fellows, once upon a time--and that's the low-down truth--
seven ripsnorters, seven roaring boys set out
but split apart in traveling, two by two paired off
till only three remained and glowed beneath the moon--
that is, till winds should blow and knock down two more men!"

Odysseus laughed and grabbed his old friend by the arm:
"Good going! Though your mills grind slow, they make fine
flour!
It's clear to see you're right, for we shall part one day.
Don't fret! That's how things are. There is no cure on earth,
the Wheel spins on, and now not even G-d can stop it.
Forget it, splayfoot! Kick it behind you! Let it plunge!
Quit digging your brain so; it doesn't suit you, friend.
Hood both your eyes and blot all out, and a good waking!
Sleep is a G-d that heals the heart which waking wounds."
____________________________________________

He spoke, then swiftly strode toward the barbarian chiefs,
and his companions marveled at his lurching gait
as though earth were a ship's deck tossed by surging storm.
____________________________________________

He spoke and sighed, then bent down with his shaggy arms,
quickly unearthed the pit until the fragrance poured
from the flushed lamb till all their famished bowels shook.
At that same moment their lion-master's shadow loomed:
"I see you toil at good and tasty tasks, my friends.
I'm mother-in-law's delight, I come at lunchtime always!
Let's fall to eating so our teeth won't spill on earth;
they say there's no more tasty food than the last lamb."
They raised the roast lamb, skinned it to its tender flesh

and ate their fill; then Granite, wise in shepherd's lore,
scraped clean the lamb's translucent shoulder-bone,
raised it against the light and pondered its dark signs:
"I see clear marks of evil on this beast's bare bone:
a crimson river, tombs that gape in long, long rows,
and four deep yawning pits that lie in wait for meat."
Then feather-brains grew numb, groped at the gaping tombs,
and when he felt grooved lines strung out in a long row
his flute-enraptured, pallid fingers shook with fright.
Bold Kentaur laughed and threw the bone into the flames:
"Our fate lies not in a sheep's bone but on our backs!"
Then the deep-minded man pressed his lips tight and thought:
"Not on a sheep's bone, and not even on our backs;
fate writes on water, a wind blows, and all things vanish."
____________________________________________

Suns passed and sank in sands until the full moon bloomed
like a white rose of silence and perfumed the night;
boughs of the almond withered in spring's giddy spell
and cast its flowers and downy almonds and green leaves;
trees flowered and bore fruit, time slowly passed, and still
the chiefs in the king's dungeons stretched and groaned.
But Nile lay calm in a far nook, plotting with craft
how to pierce through the thickset walls and walk once more
in sun to heal poor mankind's fallen, orphaned heart.
____________________________________________

Thus all night long, filled with huge horns and wings and claws,
he strove to help that athlete in his fearful task,
then stopped for breath at daybreak and half-opened his eyes,
but still the dream poured through his brain like swirling mist.
He looked on high and his heart lightened, for dawn smiled,
raw and rose-green and tender, from the round light-well.
For a long time he could not rise, his wild mind pulsed,
the tears that he had shed at night still drenched his beard,
and when his comrades pressed him round and questioned him
he looked for hours in their dark eyes but could not speak.
Poor glutton probed his friend with fear and cried, "Odysseus!"

Then the night warrior shook free from his dreadful dream
and, filled with welling joy, seized his friends' heads and cried:
"I've seen him!" but his smothered throat could make no further
sound.

Crouched mutely in a corner, all day long he hacked a block
of wood while surging waves reared in his blood and struck
his brains with rage as at moss-covered rocks, to smash them.
He rounded out the skull, strove to recall that dragon
who'd fought the sky like Death to save poor Mother Earth,
dug out the eyes, carved the mustache in high relief,
and branched two veins like horns between the glowering
eyebrows.

But when the work lay finished in his hands at night
he flung it to the ground with raging bloodshot eyes
for his own cunning features gaped from the hewn wood.
He grabbed a new block then and slowly carved all night,
striving to drag up from his entrails that great warrior;
in his wild mind he still recalled those eyes and brows,
that dread, that stubbornness and grit, but his numb hands
could not impress them on the wood to free his heart.
For three long days he toiled and fought, but his thick fingers
formed fiery cunning eyes and mocking grinning lips,
coarse curly beards and pointed caps and old sea-wolves;
he carved his own soul still, whether he willed or not,
and the great athlete still lay hid deep in his heart.
For three long days G-d strove to see his own dark face,
and at the lone man's failures Nile smiled mockingly:

"You're flinging stones in sun! What shame to waste such
strength,
stumbling on ghosts and scarecrows, trying to find G-d!"
____________________________________________

Slowly they breached and thrust deep in the desert's throat, 250
the scorched grass curled with heat, the road was a parched hide;
the sun, a round bronze disk, brimming with burning coals,
rose, spilled its flaming brands, and then was quenched in dusk.
The hot earth slowly cooled, all living creatures breathed,
G-d once more sprouted sweetly in men's smoldering hearts, 255
a thousand heads poked out, a thousand bright eyes gleamed
amid dry boughs, in coarse-grained sand, deep in mud pools.
____________________________________________

Meanwhile the proud troops flew on wings and swirled in dance
then cast their eyes to the red West and hailed the sun:
"Light of our eyes, celestial drum with crimson hide,
beat quickly till we reach the castle of our L-rd South.
His fortresses are dampening fogs, his roofs are clouds,
he sits enthroned amid his guests, the three wild winds;
some call him a pale prince, some the consumptive South,
a small bird sits on his red roof and calls him Death:
'Dear Death, full forty brave lads march the desert sands,
dear Death, your palace melts and all your roofs are tears,
why in their hands is the great sun a crimson drum?' "

Thus all the slaked mouths sang in the descending sun
but in the violet dusk their quick-eyed leader spied
huge rocks that loomed like dragons in the desert sands
and ran off softly from his troops to touch those ghosts.
But when he reached their monstrous shadows, his heart leapt,
for carved on the huge rocks he saw strong rutting rams
amid whose curved and lofty horns the great sun rose,
and each ray was a ripe and bearded stalk of wheat.
____________________________________________

"A fig, you murderer, for your spite! With or without
your courage, if I can, I'll save these orphaned kids.
We, too, I think, have souls. Don't ride your high horse now!"
He spurred his bulky body then and turned his face,
and as they took the rough road back, a mother swerved
to gaze for the last time on youths who steamed in heat,
but all at once she shrieked in fright and closed her eyes,
for the man-killer with his high cap plodded last
and on his black burnt back the savage mask hung down;
there the man-sucking G-d grinned in the torrid sun
and blood dropped clump by clump upon the spreading crimson
sands.

The days lit flickering fires over their bare heads
and nights like chilling waters coursed along their backs;
young girls grew pale and thin, their eyes were ringed with blue,
and young men further tightened their lean hollow waists.
A great magician with the army once crouched low
and scratched on rocks wild game and birds to trap their souls,
but birds flew by in dazzling blaze and beasts loped off
and left the sad magician with but useless snares.
The sun rose from its oven like a round breadloaf
and scorched their famished bellies, wild game stalked their
minds
like chubby G-ds who in their paws held man's salvation,
but, merciless and silent, they would not draw near
nor sacrifice their flesh to save the human herd.
____________________________________________

Night passed, until at dawn the great disk-thrower cast
the sun like a vermilion quoit on the sky's rim; 585
the drums resounded, and the young men leapt from sleep,
tossed from their heads the sweet seductions of the night
and once more plodded on the day's coarse endless sands.
Granite first took the lead, and glittered like a star
with streaming banners, a lean-boned and noble form; 590
behind him swept like flames his hand-picked glowing youths,
and the pale piper hopped close by with his huge drum,
his neck embraced by wounds like coral crimson rings;
last came the silent archer, looking behind and after,
a porter who lugged his heavy G-d on his burnt back 595
and in the desert's fiery glitter held his heart
like a refreshing water-gourd to slake his thirst.
A choking flame-ferocious wind sucked up the sands,
the sun grew dim as though eclipsed, the young men vanished,
and Granite's tall shape in the sandstorm vanished too. 600

Then the man-killer stopped, a black flash crossed his mind:
old deadly battles and his memory's ancient cries,
as though with other troops and in another life
where all drank wine and the mind crowed and his brave lads
had mounted their white steeds and dashed into the desert 605
with their black twisted headbands, with their drums and
weapons
to fight the fiery whirlwind with their gleaming spears.
As they thrust deep in the sand's furnace, all at once
a huge wind rose and the sand-mountains heaved like waves,
rose and swelled slowly, then once more came settling down, 610
but ah, alas, what had become of the brave youths?
____________________________________________

The king placed in his grandsire's skull a hutch of wheat,
and then the bride stretched out her arms with joy and cried:
"Grandfather, wake, come to your vine-fields once again,
they have grown wild with weeds, they need your lustful blade!
Grandfather, wake, strap on your manly weapons now,
rise from the earth and in my entrails knit your flesh,
harvest my youth and tear my womb, appear once more
as a male child and in your cradle laugh and play!
Here is the man, grandfather, who'll burst my lock for you!"
She spoke, then with her heavy lips licked up the wheat
from her ancestor's snow-white skull and chewed it slowly.
The suffering man beheld the rites with silent joy;
man's sluggish wheel moved slowly in his secret brain--
he climbs the soil a babe, then in old age slumps down,
then once more, as the earth's dark jaws grind fine, he leaps
from the dark womb and issues, weeping, to blazing light.
The mystic wheel whirled in his mind with flashing sparks,
all generations in his mind rose, sank, and fell,
then once more swarmed within him, seethed and hatched their
eggs.


The pace of life now seemed to him to move so slow
that it could never match the throbs in his wild breast.
____________________________________________

Odysseus ran and lashed G-d's mask to his dark chest
with sturdy thongs and felt it gnaw deep at his heart
the way a child will bite and suck his mother's breasts,
and his G-d's bloodshot eyes, his nostrils, ears, and jaws
opened and closed on his wild chest and gaped with hunger.
Day broke, the sun roared in the sky, a bursting sphere
that beat down and rebounded from earth's drum-taut hide.
All heads once more were scorched by flame till their heads
blazed,
G-d's face changed and grew savage once again; the world,
flaming and desolate now, spread like sand-blasted wastes.
Like a good shepherd, Kentaur counted with his eyes
how many had been winnowed out in the ruthless trek,
how many had turned back and died in scorching sands,
how many had anchored in a woman's harboring breasts,
and G-d, how many girls had stayed, in black arms locked.
He counted over and over again, and his spine shook,
for he felt G-d above them winnowing hearts and souls
with a fine sieve, picking and choosing ruthlessly,
till glutton's mind could bear no more, and his thick lips,
bride-bitten, quarreled profoundly now with G-d's caprice:
"G-d, you've sure muffed your job! Your world's a stinking
crime!
If I were G-d, I wouldn't change myself one bit,
I'd cut up wild on earth once more, I'd chase the girls,
I'd take a ship, I'd sail, I'd once more choose the archer
to make all my decisions, take on the world's headaches,
while I sprawled on my back and quaffed life like a L-rd!
I'd fling my heart wide open to the four wild winds
like a paternal home and welcome good and evil both.
I'd play no favorites, all are my babes, I like them all,
and if at times they tire and fall on earth to rest,
I fetch them into light again to gaze on the sun.
But this G-d that Odysseus lugs on his burnt back
strikes ruthlessly at earth and kills without regret.
You're two of a kind! To think that such as you now rule the
world!"

Their heads grew ripe in the hot sun like hanging fruit;
as shadows lengthened and night fell, they lit campfires,
turned on their shoulders slowly, stretched on sand, and slept,
a bevy of birds which sleep the hunter strings together.
The people slept, but by the fire their chiefs kept vigil,
and the archer, sitting in their midst, feeding the blaze,
rejoiced to see that flames, the more they eat the more
they flick their greedy tongues as though to eat still more:
"I bow in reverence to your hunger, my great brothers,"
he murmured, then turned to his fellow-travelers gently,
for all that day his bursting heart had seethed and boiled, 1180
he'd kept his lips and brains unlaughing, locked up tight,
for in his heart joy had expanded and pain increased.
He watched his sleeping troop, rejoiced, and wished them well:
"While the world sleeps, leaders must always keep the watch
and speak of good and evil done, then take full measure 1185
and cut the future's cloth true to the mind's desire,
for the strong spirit holds the world like wax and molds it.
This seemed to me like a good day, my faithful friends,
behind us the green town, before us seas of sand,
and we, between them, join in one G-d's double face. 1190
I see it clearly now, the desert's my true land;
I thrust more deeply in myself the more I pierce her.
Heat, hunger, wild beasts, trees which hang with skulls for fruit --
these are mosaics with which man's heart and the earth are built.
Thrust these few words deep in your minds and lash them tight: 1195
the more our journey widens and new roads unwind,
the more G-d widens and unwinds on this vast earth.
It's we who feed him, friends; all that we see, he eats,
all that we hear or touch, all that thrusts through our minds,
he takes for his adornment and his strutting wings. 1200
Soon as we see these savage thorn trees on the sands
he too sprouts thorns and stings us with ferocious rage,
and when we hear the wild beasts prowl, he too grows wild,
growls savagely and scares poor man out of his wits.
In our own land he wears white linen cloth with grace,
but here in Africa he grows ferocious, wears bronze rings
in his wide ears and nostrils, tall plumes on his head,
sweats like a Negro, and like a Negress stinks with musk.
G-d is the monstrous shadow of death-grappling man."

But as the archer spoke and fed the flames with boughs
and his eyes sailed upon them as on crimson seas,
he burst out suddenly in a startling cackling laugh:
"Now by the sword I wear, I sometimes lose my wits;
it's true that he may need us, that we two are one,
it may be he's our master and on desert sands
heaps high at times a tray of bison, water, bread,
and not because he loves us--drive that from your thoughts--
but to keep living the flesh on which he rides through life!"
Granite arose and cast huge handfuls of dry thorns
upon the dying flames till they leapt up like lions;
his smothered heart could bear no more, and he spoke out:
"On the day I left my craggy native land, there blew
deep in my heart full fifty winds and fierce typhoons.
Passions ate at my heart, nor could I free them then,
but now at length all things distill within me clearly;
now I know why and for what cause I'd give my life.
As we pierce through the desert sands, two great commands
are etched deep in my mind, the voice of our dread G-d."
"What great commands?" his leader cried, and his heart throbbed.
His friend, as though confessing, said in a low voice:
"This is the first which from on high spoke to my heart:
'May he be cursed for whom both sorrow or joy suffice,
may he be cursed who smothers not in mankind's virtues;
open your arms, my brothers, that the world may grow!'
Then softly, softly, when great hunger stabbed our guts,
the second great command pierced my illumined mind:
'Only great hunger feeds my G-d, and great thirst slakes him.' "
But then the piper shrilled out with his murky brain: 1238
"As I trudged on I shouted in my slanting mind:
'Where are you going, fool? Will you never stop? Behold,
I see roads heaped with the bleached bones of crazy travelers!
Though I seek deathless water, alas, I sink to Hades!' "
In some of his friends' minds the lone man's words struck home:
"You're off the track, my piper, for you think you speed
to find deep wells of deathless water to slake your thirst,
but Granite here has hunted down and caught my secret:
to climb and hunger, Orpheus: this is my G-d's feast,
to thirst in the desert, Orpheus: these are my G-d's wells."
As Granite gazed on the low flames, his bright eyes dimmed
as though he felt ashamed now of that day's confession,
and he rose swiftly, grabbed and flung some thorny brush
in the low fire until it blazed with sputtering tongues
and cast reflected crimson stripes on all their faces.
Then Granite tried with stealth to shift the dangerous talk:
"I've loved and never had enough of two live things:
to watch flames lick their tongues, and animals at play."
But the soul-snatcher laughed and caught his comrade's arm:
"One day, my friend, I'll carve on every skull and stone,
and on all tree trunks, the commands of our dread G-d.
I shall engrave them on all flesh with flaming iron
that I might march with open eyes straight on toward Death."
A river-bearded ancient archon shook his head,
with deep sword-slashes on his bones, with crumbling teeth:
"You gab too much of G-d and pass him through too fine
a sieve until there's nothing left of him to eat.
I hear but one cry only, more than enough for me:
'Never ask why, but follow a soul greater than yours!' "
All then fell silent, and the archer's backbone shook
as though a thousand souls had hung about his neck
while he drove on and chose salvation's road alone,
salvation's and destruction's, for the two were one,
and both pursued one goal, a two-tongued hungry flame.
Midnight: the fire crackled swiftly, danced and ate,
and the archer's brains, too, crackled like dry burning thorns;
the owl's mournful voice dripped on the moonlit sands
and the flame-flickering leader touched slim Granite's knees:
"Don't speak, my brother, for a majestic city looms
on my heart's mountain summits and my mind's plateaus.
Flames leap and sway in my dark head and lick their tongues,
they build tall towers and castle gates and battlements,
they build long rows of homes where mothers laugh and work,
young men stroll by with spears, and girls with water-jugs,
old crones beneath the flowering pear trees weave their shrouds,
and I hear wedding songs, laments and lullabies,
and smell full ovens in the yards, wine-must in kegs,
and women who have laved their locks with jasmine oil.
The Laws sit round the castle walls like hungry beasts
with gaping greedy jaws and eat and drink and growl."
As the dreamer talked, the piper raised his reedy flute
and soon began to play a swift and rousing tune,
but the archer, deeply ravished by his castle dreams,
heard no flute sounds, not even glutton's mocking laugh,
for when he stopped, broad-bottom burst in cavern roars:

"Air-building master-craftsman, with your flames for trowel,
confess now: if you lacked the piper's dulcet flute,
you never could complete alone your tall dream castle!
He's your hod carrier lugging clay with a thrush-feather!"
The many-minded man grew angry and stamped his foot:
"Not even miracles can pierce your hide, my friend,
for with a cuckoo's cry and a flame's flickering tongue,
with the empty hollow wind-toys of the playful mind
I shape my tall dream castles swiftly in my head.
That day will come when my thin shadow will turn to meat,
my inner flames to outer stone, when my mind's visions
will swoop to earth down from my head's tall hidden peaks.
See, I strike stone, grab earth, and seize your arm--
just as my fists have filled now, so one day, I swear,
I'll build my tall dream city with stones, beams, and G-ds.
This is how cities are first planted in firm ground!"
And then Odysseus smiled and would not speak a word;
his bright eyes swiftly labored with the toiling flames,
stars in the heavens shone like clusters of thick nests,
great thoughts shone upright in his dark and savage head,
but his mind held the flute of silent thought, and played serenely.
____________________________________________

The sun plunged downward and was lost, and the full moon,
like night's white breast, brimmed with a pale and frothing milk,
streams shone like Nereids, lions' manes dripped silver dew,
and rough-skinned gleaming tongues licked at the milky air.
____________________________________________

Thus slowly in the forest solitude his mind
grew ripe and his heart sweetened with much brooding thought
until one night, when fires were lit and all stretched out
and like a loving father he'd portioned food to all,
poor Kentaur seized his courage, found his tongue, and said:
"Master, sad words float on my lips all night and day
but no one dares to tell you now of his heart's pain."
The lone man heard and his gall rose; he turned his head:
"It's true! Your eyes shall never again look on his face!"
Startled, the guileless man then left that savage shade
who played with his wild leopard cub nor ate nor drank
but lay apart and watched the sky till his mind creaked.
It seemed the stars had changed the course that fate had set;
where were his old acquaintances of night, the stars,
which his night-wandering mind had taken for sure signs?
Gone was the Bull, the Eagle, and the Eagle's Tail,
the Charioteer had set, and the Seven Sisters vanished,
the vast star-river had plunged into a dark abyss,
and the Yoked Seven Brothers plowed the sky's foundation;
even the unshaken keystone of all stars, that led all ships,
seemed also to have changed its course and turned toward
setting;
a strange new sky had suddenly burst above his head.
He turned to earth once more and fondled his wild cub,
her bow-taut and lean body, her fuzzy belly, her flanks,
her small yet sharp milk teeth which glittered in red gums,
until the handsome beast growled sweetly, stretched her claws
and lightly scratched his bitter chest with playful strokes.
____________________________________________

Some rolled expiring on the earth, and some held back
their strength, nor would expend it, G-d, but soared and watched
your glowing belly shine in the high blinding light.
I am the bridegroom ant, the bride, and the blue sky!
It lasted but a lightning flash in your dark loins,
and wingless now, you crawl on earth, remembering nothing,
but I still fly and couple in my brain immutably,
my bridal wings still shed, still spread upon the earth,
nor does time pass but that I take him for my groom.
Ah, my poor heart is torn, my entrails gape and shut,
and I submit my body to G-d's quartering winds,
a flowering almond branch plundered by honeybees.
____________________________________________

He jumped from rock to rock, his lion shadow leapt,
the sun resounded like a gold war-shield held high,
animals moved, trees rustled, and the waters chirped--
the whole world like an army marched, and the archer led
and felt that he'd become all earth from his loins down.
____________________________________________

As the archer sang in the wild wastes, his heart grew light,
his castle grew immense and firm, devoured the air,
drew down the sun into its boughs like a tall tree,
and as his city flowered and knit, the lone man felt
like a ripe seed that burst in bloom to be disburdened.
But all at once he leant against a rock and felt
G-d gasp and plod at his right side, stumbling on stones,
and the archer turned to greet him like a gentle host,
but his hand hung in air and his eyes stared with fright
for G-d changed many forms and leapt in the evening air.
His forebear now passed by with greedy hands outstretched;
starving, he reached for fruit, but the tall trees grew taller;
thirsting, he reached for water, but all streams went dry;
tiring, he leant against an oak, but the oak vanished.
The old man sighed and cursed, then once more plodded on,
but his face suddenly changed again, for now there passed
the myriad-wounded athlete with his lion's skull, 1171
tagged by that savage and three-headed bulldog, Death.
But as the tall mind-spinner tried to shout with joy,
the mighty champion sped and vanished in thin air.
Then the sublime white-bearded L-rd of the mind passed
with his fierce eagle, holding tightly in his embrace
the holy infant flame, glittering from top to toe,
until the rocks at his great passing flashed like flint.
Thus all three shepherds of the human race passed by, 1179
and as Odysseus roamed the ridge, the gaunt rocks rang,
tumult and tramp of feet encircled the mountain's rim,
horsemen and infantry dashed by, battalions climbed,
raised banners fluttered in the air, and lances gleamed.
The archer drew back swiftly to let the armies pass,
but armies in the gloaming there were none, all youths
had vanished, only an old bent vagabond passed by
stumbling on stones and slowly munching a dry bun.
The much-tormented archer shuddered, his eyes glazed,
bitterness, rage, contempt, and fear swept through his mind;
he raised his hands to the old tramp and the gorge rang:
"Old man, are you my fearful G-d? Stop, speak to me!"
But the old man slowly turned his face and bit his lips;
and the unsweetened archer shook to see the pallid hue,
the savage bitterness, the spite, the unfathomed eyes,
the flickering flames that glittered in his eyes like snakes, 1195
the bloodstained endless upward road he climbed with grief.
The rebel's heart ached like a woman's to see him thus,
and tender words sprang to his lips and trembled there--
ah, how he longed to fall in his arms and ease his pain!
But since he felt ashamed to show such tenderness, 1200
not knowing what else to do to hide his shock, he hung
his bloodstained bow on his left arm and whistled softly.
As the sun set behind his back, the full round moon
before him rose in gold till both their beams commingled;
both stars glowed lovingly and smiled, like man and wife, 1205
then parted; the sun vanished down the mountain's rim,
and the moon paled and softly hovered in the afterglow.
____________________________________________

On Negro villages the sun-filled moonlight dripped,
far-distant hamlets drowned in silver, the troughs brimmed,
and all the narrow cobbled lanes flowed like rich streams of milk.
____________________________________________

With his sharp knife he drew a circle around the hearth,
raked well the fire with a lit torch, quartered it well, 405
raised in the center a tall heap of burning coals
then thrust in its hot heart his tall black-hilted knife:
"Open your brains, my brothers, this is our town's seed,
and G-d stands on its peak with burning brands about him,
women and strong men at their prime, youth in their bloom, 410
and fresh twigs at the left, children not yet enflamed,
and burnt-out embers further off, the black old men,
while round our city loom the tower-breasted walls."
He spoke, and his two comrades, stooped in night's black pitch,
watched marveling how their city shone for hours on earth; 415
and when they had well sown her in their furrowed minds,
the archer swiftly scattered the fierce flames and stamped her out.
____________________________________________

Time passed as swiftly as a bird's bright honeymoon,
trowels and cleavers flashed, the smell of new-cut wood
rose as the town climbed like a tree and filled the air
while souls soared with it like ecstatic singing birds.
When they stopped work at sunset and pressed round their fires,
the archer strove with patience to etch his dread G-d
deep in the hard flint minds of his most simple people:
"Now hear me, brothers, and cock your minds, for I shall speak:
G-d does not sit enthroned on clouds nor in black Hades,
nor flits like empty shades through man's imagination,
but he, too, walks the barren earth and struggles with us.

At times he turns into a plowman after the spring
rains fall, or to a boatman tossed by foaming seas,
at times into a soldier who grafts his blood with ours.
Now he's become a master-mason for whom we fetch
stones, wood, mud, souls, and as he works with joy, he sings.
When the day's work was done last night, I saw him stand
to watch what had been built and munch a crust of bread;
his long beard in the sunset gleamed like burning thorns,
and as he smiled he murmured happily, 'Well done!' "
The people listened, and at dawn when all hacked wood
or fetched mud hurriedly, or built their walls, all felt
they hewed and built their G-d's great body on firm earth.
Slowly the town took form in sun and filled with sound,
crenels and ramparts rose, the four broad town gates shone
till streets and lanes with all their tributaries rolled
like streams with still unfinished homes on the far banks.
"Ah, how the great thoughts of a full man spread their roots
upon the ground and then take shape with sticks and stones,"
the lone man murmured as he watched his craftsmen toil.
He judged each soul in action, marked deep in his brain
each strength, each bodily movement, and each grace of mind;
he'd picked already what great workers were most firm
with their sharp tools of trade for earth, or sea, or air,
yet placed above them the sharp-spoken and cruel lancers
who held the keys of manliness, the seal of honor,
but highest, the mind-battlers, the full fruit of strife.
The town formed like a body in the archer's mind;
all rushed to the same goal obediently and worked
toward their full-rigged, invisible monarch in their hearts.
At night, when all cooked by the fire's submissive flames,

the master-craftsman counseled his hard workers well:
"G-d wants no separate hearths or double-bolted doors;
who in his croft corrals his children, wife, and beasts
walls up all virtues, makes them idle, chokes his G-d,
till the whole world's confined within his private gate.
Within G-d's city is no separate husbandry;
let the young man in rut seize what girl fills his eye
and thrust deep in the woods to enjoy the lightning bolt
then part again at dawn before the sweet flash fades.
But let old crones and codgers, mankind's useless trash,
die quickly and return once more to the good loam
that their tribe's roots may eat and drink and bloom in grandsons.
Let all youths grow to manhood in wide courts apart,
far from their parents' heavy shadows, free of heart,
for this town, brothers, is the town of all brave sons
who shall surpass their fathers and set their prow for G-d!"
He spoke and showed the palpable, apparent walls,
the body of his G-d, that each day inched from earth;
but when the great-eyed man remained alone at night,
his town's invisible ramparts creaked and rose in flames
and purple smoke from the four walls of his great head.
Blue, secret castle doors where Death might come and go,
laws and injunctions, hopes and orders rose and swelled,
but all were pale smoke spiraling in his mind's great fire
nor yet would condescend to be enfleshed in words or law.

One day as he was spinning in his mind with care
on what great fertile law, custodian of all virtue,
he might make fast a town that strained beyond man's reach,
he heard a whirring sound as of a thousand wings,
stood still and saw tall earthen columns, cracked and dry,
from which dense clouds of winged ants burst like swirling
smoke
until the sky was blackened and the sun eclipsed.
The great lawmaker thrilled to see the wedding stream
soar to create in light the mighty destined groom,
and as his mind spun round the mystery of the world
the cloud fell down on earth and heaps of gray-ashed ants
swarmed on the ground and floundered with bedraggled wings.
The deadly and fierce wedding had ended in bright air,
and those who held G-d in their guts and reached the bride
had filled her body with battalion-forming seed,
but heaps of wretched flagging grooms expired on earth,
for the all-sucking G-d had now no need of them.
A fundamental hawk-eyed goal flashed through his mind:
"This is the sign I've yearned for, this is my great law!"
he muttered as he rushed to see the great soul-strife;
but birds had smelled the loot already and swooped down,
mute serpents slid and gulped, gold-beetles, scorpions frisked
and chewed the soft, exhausted grooms with greedy haste.
Earth shook with sweet reverberations as beasts filled
their bellies while man's mind browsed over all, refreshed,
and with unsleeping eyes gazed on the just, fierce law.
"Whatever blind Worm-Mother Earth does with no brains 600
we should accept as just, with our whole mind, wide-eyed;
if you would rule the world, model yourself on G-d."
Thus did he think, then swiftly to his building turned,
but held all laws etched in the tablets of his mind.
____________________________________________

Upright, the archer shot his shafts in the cool cave:
"He's not Almighty, brothers! Blood pours from his veins,
he stumbles on the earth with Death close at his heels!"
Painfully wounded, his friends groaned to hear him speak,
a newly wed young maiden clasped her child and said:
"I don't want such a G-d who can't even save my child!"
But the archer's lightning-shivered mind struck in reply:
"My G-d is made of fire, water, soul, and sweat!
He's not a vast immortal thought, or bird of air;
he's only mortal flesh, like us, a flickering brain,
a restless stubborn heart that trembles like man's own
nor knows from where he started nor toward what he goes.
Whoever of you can bear him, comrades, let him stay,
but he who seeks a deathless and compassionate G-d,
let him leave now at once with all his goods and kin,
and let the last cruel sifting start this holy day!"
____________________________________________

There is a time for earth to bloom, for fruit to knit,
a time for wintry death to blow trees, G-ds, and men
flat to the ground until the new wheel turn once more.
Man-loving life at evening sighs, leans on her door,
an unplowed feverish widow watching the long road:
"I've plucked the petals of my heart out one by one--
will my man come or not, will my son come or not?"
Her cellars overflow, her great hearth glows like gold,
within her sunken vaults her stooped slaves weave, unweave,
she decks her body with branched velvet, silver cloth,
but her voluptuous flesh grows withered like dry flowers
on which no sun shines and no water pours, dear G-d.
She smells, a long way off, the world's far realms, and weeps.
Ah, once upon a time upon this desolate road
a towering stalwart man with thick mustaches strolled;
his blond flesh smelled like a wild boar's, and on his limbs,
his thighs, his loins, his shoulders, swift ships sailed tattooed
with thickset suns, half-moons and stars, while his warm blood
leapt in his chest like a red flaming beast in rut.
But now her loved man had grown old, useless in bed,
G-d also had grown white and old and lay on the ground
where snakes and lizards coiled, where bats swooped at his side:

"Winter has come, grandfather, we're drowsy, let us thrust
in your dark hollows and white hair to sleep in warmth;
O, bless us now that we in time may greet the sun."
____________________________________________

[Kentaur]

Tall on the cliff, he closed his eyes, shut out the town,
but it still proudly gleamed in the sun's blazing rays:
"Man's life, dear G-d, is but the blinking of an eye."
____________________________________________

Then he thrashed out with rage against his ruthless G-d:
"You fool, how in your greatest need can you abandon
most glorious man who lives and fights to give you shape?
You fill our hearts with cries and vehement desires,
then sink your ears in silence and refuse to listen;
but man's soul will fight on, you coward, without your help!"

His heart leapt high, spurned Death, and in the black air cut
a thousand roads to fly through on a thousand wings,
then, screeching like a hawk, strove to unwind what fate had 1460
woven.
____________________________________________

And when I plunged deep in the sea or the sun's blaze,
how my dark body bloomed in all its million pores!
What do I want with the mind's hollow satisfactions,
why should I seek G-ds in the clouds, grandsons on earth?
____________________________________________

One night an erring nightingale perched on his head,
and as with throat raised high it warbled its sweet sons
the windswept man could bear no more and softly wept,
for, ah, a small bird's caroling unwound his heart;
and as he listened to the bird sing to the wind
his sentry mind forgot and left its gate wide open
so that Telemachus, well nourished, sweet, appeared
and clasped his own dear child, and thus began to scold:
"When, Father, will your heart grow sweet and satisfied?
Man's feet were first created but to walk the earth,
his hands to pull the oarblades or to grasp the hoe;
G-d did not make men wings, Father, to cut the air;
but you strive to surpass man's holy measurement
and turn your hands and feet to wings till the earth flares
and fades like lightning bolts in your inhuman brain.
At times like scorpions you spout flames in burning hearths,
at times you freeze up like a winter snake, but never
rejoice in the serene and sacred warmth of man."

As his son scolded, in his wretched crown there rose
his world's far memories like huge dappled butterflies;
the somber brain-filled elders of his island came,
and all his musk-grapes, his ripe figs, his straight-prowed ships,
his dulcet flute held by his mountain shepherd lad,
till his brains filled with women's laughter and female clogs.
The great ascetic watched his longing's flimsy veil
wave lightly above his head in streams of varied hue
while like the spider's subtle web his memories stitched
the air, then gleamed and beckoned like alluring sirens.
____________________________________________

"Aye, great forefather, bottomless heart, O hopeless need,
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
you've never drunk, hunger because you've never eaten,
but hunger itself has sated me and thirst unslaked me."
____________________________________________

In the sun's distant icebound realms he saw his bones
wrapped round with seaweed, battered by the frothing waves,
and on his skull a fat black raven perched, the Soul.
____________________________________________

Ah, time is bitter and space confined;
the lone man's dance shall overbrim, then fall from time
like an illumined star and vanish in the world's dark night.
____________________________________________

ODYSSEUS: "I brace myself and kick the Wheel of Fate! Whirl on!
Let old men drool, and let the dead be patient still;
we have no time, our hearts beat with sledge-hammer blows,
the iron is white-hot now, and life is brief, most brief!
Let generations flick in sun like lightning streaks,
let all trees flower and rot in a brief flash on earth,
let kingdoms in one day rise like the sun at dawn,
climb swiftly to mid-heavens and finally fade at dusk.
Let life's wheel also whirl as swiftly as my heart,
let the young man cry out and the maid rise in sun,
let me cast love with her red ankles down to earth,
let wretched people fall like brushwood in the hearth,
let all that take long years to bloom last not one hour!
Come forward, faithful slave, appear, come bring the dreadful
news!"
____________________________________________

SLAVE: "O king!" OLD KING: "Don't spare me, slave! Speak bold
and clear!
This heavy heart no longer aches; give it no thought.
I know my army has turned tail and scurries back."

SLAVE: "O king!" OLD KING: "Don't hurry, slave, my heart has
turned to stone."

SLAVE: "O king, your army's lost! It's faded away like mist!"

OLD KING: "I fling my arms to heaven and swear a mighty oath:
I'll not draw back the bolts, you'll never take the maid!
I hold a soul as grieved as yours! Fate's will be done!"

PRINCE: "O wild winds, blow, scatter his castle's ashes far,
may his white beard be steeped in blood, may all his wealth
be blown to the world's ends, and may his kingdom fade!"

SLAVE: "Master, the field's aflame, battalions press us close,
the foe has zoned the city, and the frenzied crowd
rush to burn down the palace with red flaming brands!"

OLD KING: "In your dread hands, O L-rd, I see a wreath of
flames. O slave, what do the people want of my red crown?"

SLAVE: "Master, the people charge you with a heavy crime
because you hold our dread ascetic's only daughter
deep in a dungeon's pit unjustly, with no cause,
and now the ascetic's soul has risen and cracked our walls.
Set her free, master, loose this sorceress on the foe,
she's stronger far than armies for with her white hands
and her caresses she can kill the foe's fierce king.
The crowds complain you smite them out of stubbornness;
do what they wish, don't let one soul destroy them now."

OLD KING: "The moment every man's conceived, a worm is born
and crawls on past all fields and peaks to eat him whole!
The same thing happens when a town or a whole world's
conceived, and now that our own city's worm crawls close
here on this plain, not even G-d can change our fate."

SLAVE: "Master, I hear the dungeon's bronze bolts crash and fall!"

OLD KING: "I hear the flesh fall from my soul, and mist from
mind. . ."

SLAVE: "Master, they've smashed the bolts, they've pulled the
dungeon down and brought to light, unshackled, the great ascetic's child!"

OLD KING: "All things are smokes, shames, fancies of the burning
mind. Run swiftly, slave, bring me the maid, for fate speeds on.
Make keys and counter-keys, O heart, bolt yourself well
and say this was a lustrous dream, that the cock crowed,
that life stripped off its golden clothes and turned to air."

SLAVE: "Master, here at your feet I place the slender maid;
she can bewitch the cycling sun, cast down the moon,
and bring the foe to utter ruin in just one night;
open your eyes and mind, command your sacred wish."

OLD KING: "Life's a red lightning flash; I walk in its bright glow,
I've seen all things, I've no more hope or fear, I'm free!
Death is a long, long feather that I hold aloft."

PRINCE: "Welcome, midwinter sun, O welcome, bright new moon,
a thousand welcomes with your cool arms, maid I love!
____________________________________________

OLD KING: "Lady, I've rooted up my heart! Take joy of him!
I rip the regal crown from off my whitened hair
and place it like a coal of fire about your head.
We crawl from fire to fire on earth, and thus proceed;
between two towering, blazing pyres we dance and weep,
nor does death pity us, nor does life want us now."
____________________________________________

"O Mind, last born of demons, pregnant head like that
broad mare the castle-wreckers raised before Troy's walls,
O pure unpitying eye, O lash of light that whips
the brainless night and flogs her flesh with lightning bolts,
thank you for scattering my great pain in a sweet game!
The man most virile holds the dreadful keys of life,
locks and unlocks with no sure hope, disjoins but air,
groans not with blows, nor trembles, but with courage thrusts
into desire's nonexistent palace built on air
and gladly girds himself with the great Keys of Nothingness."

The sun was still unborn, the day-star laughed long still
under the sky's profound and gold-smoked wings, and still
the archer blessed and praised his playful, juggling mind.
Now sated, slaked, his heart played on the chasm's edge
and in great calmness waited for the sun to rise.
Slowly the boundless sunlight spread, the day-star shrank,
dawn bound her golden kerchief, all the leaves turned rose,
and the lone man's white hair turned red by the cliff's edge
till his heart filled with mountains, morning stars, and wings.
He leapt and seized that gold-rimmed heavy wheel, the sun,
which had bogged down in the mind's mud, and set it free.
He moved, and mountains swayed like roses in the light,
he zoned his waist with tender vines, then cut himself
a flowering staff, serenely walked from rock to rock
and joyed to feel the dawn's fuzz on his newborn skin.
As he lunged down the blossomed slopes in joy that dawn
with a small laurel spray that filled his mouth with scent,
the dawn's light burst within his heart till his head swayed
and leapt like disembodied fire in lucid air.

He laughed until his wide smile stretched from ear to ear:
"Now that my brain has cleared and sees that earth and sea
and sky are but the eye's creations, the fierce beast 1294
that guards the well is slain, the deathless water flows, 1295
smashes the dams of memory and the brain's thick walls,
pours fiercely down from the high mountains of man's head
and sweeps into the plains with ships, fish, stars, and trees,
moves all the windmills of the mind and the heart's wheels,
streams on, hails all, then plunges laughing down the abyss.
Brothers, so long as our lives last, heigh ho!, let's brim
that earthen cup, our bottomless and thirsty heart,
and drink the deathless warbling water, its cool sound!"

An unexpected sweetness seized him as he spoke,
for in his heart the brothers, Mind and War, embraced,
and he stood still to enjoy the world's conciliation.
Deep in that silence then he heard his bones break out
in warbling song like rows of flaming flutes in sun,
as though a wealthy wedding pomp set off from far
and swiftly poured down mountain slopes to find the bride.
The archer's knees gave way, he knelt on the rough ground,
bowed low with reverence, kissed his Mother Earth like bread,
and as he touched her body, a dream slowly spread,
an ancient myth, and on his quivering lashes hung.
____________________________________________

that I may not discern earth's worms or Death in air."
But the soul-snatcher played with a tree leaf and smiled
to watch it twirl within the sun's prismatic light
till his small flame-reflecting eyes began to flash.
The death-lured prince stood waiting for reply, but still
the great ghost-dragger of the dual mind's wide wings,
one light, one dark, smiled to himself, sunk in his game,
till the prince touched his shoulder and cried in a choked voice:
"What do you see in that green leaf and do not speak?"
Like gurgling water then the lone man's words gushed up
and fell from walls of silence and the mind's high crags:

"I see, O pale king's son, a mighty city rise
like a flesh-eating scabby leper, mount the stem
and slowly spread its tentacles on this fresh leaf.
I see the noise-resounding streets flash in its veins:
bent workers walk in sun together with their kings,
frail women stroll and clasp their babes like infant G-ds
and youthful horsemen dash from the wide city gates.
Then I hear sounds and weeping, laughter, groans, and wings,
till on the leaf's edge slowly leprosy is healed
as the great city sinks and its din dwindles far.
This is the secret herb I hold that cures all hearts!"
____________________________________________

Dark smothered all the gardens, and unnumbered suns
hung dancing in a male row on the thighs of night;
low in the scented courtyards, in the azure dark,
the maiden's thousand-kissed soft features glittered still,
the prince's golden garments and his new-shorn locks
lay gleaming on the tiles like funeral ornaments.
But as the white-haired athlete crossed the threshold where
so many feet had trod, he tripped in the vast night
so that the pale prince raised at once his star-washed face--
his eyes and bare breast shone, his eager lips at length
sucked at the sterile teats of the wild wilderness.
Seeing the great ascetic trip in the dense dark,
he thrust a burning brand in his gold clothes to light
the traveler's way, till in the gardens the flames leapt,
flared on the laughing nurses, on the weeping slaves,
on Margaro who stooped and followed with mute awe
earth's white-haired old bellwether with his silent bell.
The lone man's shoulders also glowed in the gold flames,
and Margaro stood still and marveled in the wilderness.
Slowly he crossed the streets, passed through the city gate,
thrust in a wood, stopped by an open clearing then
and stroked his beard, rejoiced in the starry solitude.
He was once more alone, and turned his white-haired head,
nor did his feet know now what road to take, nor did
his mind, that great road-pointer, know what to command;
his soul spread like an open sea, and roads ran everywhere.
____________________________________________

Slowly he turned, looked right and left, before, behind,
perceived his shadow spread like a black-petaled rose,
and his mind flashed and saw at once all his new road. 15
He had no G-d or master now: the four winds blew,
and in his chest his compass-heart led on toward Death.
The lone man's mind grew vast, he took a new road then,
hung a carnation on his ear and bit his lips
as life flared up and faded on his salty gills 20
and Death perched like a cricket on his shoulder blade.
Petal by petal fell the full-blown rose on earth
till but the stamen stood, rough, filled with fertile seed,
and sped erect with joy to burst down the abyss.
Odysseus spread his hand serenely in the cool dawn 25
and like a beggar calmly stood for alms to fall
when suddenly two huge drops of warm rain pelted down
into his thirsty palm like two enormous pearls.
He smiled and closed his fist as his whole body cooled,
then bent his now redeemed and double-minded head:
"My fist is slaked with charity and wants no more."
Huge drops began to fall upon the sun-scorched soil,
leaves flashed, the fragrant plants filled all the air with scent,
and as the sun sailed through the mists and the stones smiled,
the North Wind rose and blew until the storm dispersed.
____________________________________________

Light had been stifled with the shower, the damp woods steamed,
the frothy soil smelled sweetly like a new-dug grave
so that earth's odor rose into the archer's brains
as though it were an acrid wine and shook his brows
until his skull roared in the woods like crashing rocks,
like a great flint, and flung sparks in the burning air.
A lightning flash coiled in his hair like a blue viper,
earth flared and danced like a bright star, cast roots like seed,
a tree sprang up and swelled, flung flowers and fruit, and then
a sudden cry of "Fire!" rang in the wild woods
and all things turned to flimsy azure smoke, and vanished.
Like eggs that burst with hollow sound in a great fire,
the archer heard earth crack deep in his head's hearth,
but as he sang and stretched his mind's great inner bow
his eyes grew suddenly dark and his ears buzzed as though
a twanging chord had snapped in two in his mid-brow.
His face turned to a pallid blue, his sharp eyes glazed,
and his mouth twisted as he tried to shout, but choked,
by demons whipped, then spread his arms to keep from falling;
but the ground shook with sudden fury and knocked him down.
Then the deep woods resounded and the wild beasts raised
their tails with fear, the foxes stiffly cocked their ears,
earth shook again, storms raged, dark brows and temples gaped,
but slowly mountains calmed and the soul raised its head.
Odysseus took a deep breath then and looked about--
what joy! the forest blazed, deserted--not a soul
of man or beast had seen the athlete's sorry fall.
He leant against a tree, then slowly stood erect
in sun and felt Death's fingers on his shoulders still.

The sunlight fell in a white blaze and struck the ground,
and eagles spread their wings on the white fluffy clouds;
his brain reared like a king snake in the brilliant light
and swayed its undulating head to thaw in sun.
"Death laid his fingers lightly on my shoulders then!
Deep in my heart I heard him calling me to come.
Oho! My end at last approaches, the ground gapes!"
He spoke, and his brains seethed, his tholes ripped wide, but as
he mused on his sad words, his mind broke into bloom,
his forehead slowly cracked, and softly in the sun
between his eyebrows rose, unseen, the great third eye.
A deep joy drenched his soul and body through and through, 99
he felt this was his famous body's final flower;
and as through a clear emerald the sharp eye discerns
far things, and sweetness inexpressible laps the world,
and the sun loses all its poison, the air its sting,
so did the third clear emerald eye stand over the world.
He saw and hailed all virgin things for the first time,
looked on all things for the last time and cried farewell.
Each moment Time is wound, then springs like a fierce tiger
within whose mind past, present, future flare and die;
end and beginning close the circle spun by fate
and in that sweetest union the third eye arose
in the G-d-slayer's brow like a pure precious stone.
Turning, he saw his boon companion, old man Death,
standing with his lean sword beneath a fig tree's shade
while seven crimson dogs with green eyes yelped in rage.
But the brain-archer gazed on old man Death and smiled:

"Ah, friend, you wait for me in shadow astride your horse,
you hold the reins of my gray steed with your one hand
and with your other shade your eyes and search the road.
Push on toward the blue sea, O slayer! I'll greet you there!"
The sea rose in his loins and flooded all his mind,
then on his sulphurous nostrils dashed her salty spray.
He raised his white-haired head and smelled the briny air,
then like an elephant who sniffs Death's odor nigh
and to the light soil stoops serenely his old head,
recalling dimly the far haunts of his own kind,
the dark woods he had roamed, the streams where he first bathed,
and from the foreign and confining glen makes straight
for the dim cradle of his birth to perish there,
thus did Odysseus push on toward his mother, the dark sea.
He drove on southward, smelling from the world's far ends
the cool sea-spray so that his soul spread swelling sails
and Death, too, turned and whistled till the ground twigs cracked
as horses, dogs, and hunter dashed through empty light.
____________________________________________

But still behind G-d's back the king heard the sea's roar
and G-d sank suddenly in the gaping mind of man
till the mind leapt on the king's laughless head and cried:
"I only, man's great mind, exist on earth and sky!"
But still behind these words the sea mocked on in foam
and the mind shuddered and clamped tight its shameless mouth.
Once more he took the road, dashed through the mountain straits,
trees met and parted, rocks split wide, then merged again,
and all about him the stones broke in whirling dance.
One morning his exhausted nostrils smelled salt air,
an endless empty sea roared at the faint king's feet,
opened her frothing mouth and crunched the sandy shore
like a bitch-dog till Mother Earth shrank back in fear.
The poor king clutched his anguished heart to keep it whole
then grasped a log and hewed a new Unlaughing Man,
planted him like a bellbuoy on the foaming wave
then dashed in silence round the shore and swore an oath
never to stop until he'd circled all his land.
He ran around his wretched kingdom shore by shore
as days and nights passed by and emptied, full moons waned,
but still the unlaughing king ran shore by shore and wailed:
"I'm snared in a round trap! Alas, I rule an island!"
Cold winter came and went, the summer strolled and passed,
the snows fell once again, and one night the king's feet
tripped on a sodden log so that he fell down prone
and in the morning saw he held the uprooted buoy,
for he had come full circle, and the noose closed tight.
The sea had mounted and begun to eat it whole,
its wooden knees had rotted, seaweed wrapped its feet,
and the white slimy sea-worms crawled and licked its soggy
thighs.

The unlaughing king then flung his wooden mask far out
to sea and struck inland again with calm despair.
He suddenly came to a mountain heap of dead men's skulls,
and shuddered, for he guessed he saw his own old masks,
the soul's deep ancient sheaths, deep ancient ships in which
his mind had often sailed on deep oblivion's sea.
His whole life was a pile of bones, and junkman Death
cackled through every mouth and wailed in every eye.
Groaning, he clambered up the heap on hands and knees
as the bleached skulls with gaping jaws rolled clacking down,
and when the brine-bleached bones turned red toward set of sun,
the panting king at length climbed up the silent peak,
sat down cross-legged, then gazed about him with great fear:
the sea roared everywhere and rushed to gulp his kingdom!
His pale mind shook, and smoke rose from his head until
in lightning-like recall he plunged in the serene
and azure sea of deep oblivion, then sprang up,
clutching cool-dripping rubies, turquoise, coral boughs
entwined with salts and seaweeds of his ancient lives.
He'd been a monstrous armored lobster thrust in rocks,
a weightless flying fish that longed to mount the air,
a hawk that pierced the clouds, a mole at the earth's roots,
till skulls of myriad birds and beasts had wrapped his soul.
He'd growled a thousand years, he'd talked a thousand years,
at times he'd been a blood-smeared hunter, a rude rustic lad,
a rough clodhopper sowing and reaping the year through,
a sly and wealthy merchant and a fierce sea-wolf
who scoured the shores, tall at the prow, with ax in hand,
till his much-wandering blood had calmed for the last time
and turned to an unlaughing king's transparent soul.
But now, behold, the warrior sat on his old shields,
well-sheathed within the various skulls he had once worn,
and his mind cast the last beams of its afterglow:
"At last I've found the secret, and my heart grows light:
the mind's a lamp with little oil--blow, it goes out,
and all go with it, heavens and earth and the blue sea."
Struck by this sudden thought, the king began to laugh;
he laughed, and mountains swayed, he laughed, and the world
shook,
he laughed and the skulls gaped and broke in cackling cries.
But all at once, dear G-d, a sharp knife swiped his throat,
and he smelled Death approaching like a cooling breeze;
his laughter stopped and he grabbed earth in both his arms:
"Mother, let me still live a moment, an hour still!
Mother, don't let me die now with still open gaping palms!"
____________________________________________

The bard then bit his lips and the song suddenly stopped,
he wiped his sweat, then laughed, and opened his wool-sack:
"Heigh ho! my throat's sung well, but hunger chokes it now.
By G-d, although a song's immortal, it's a beast
and needs lean meat to strengthen, wine to spout and roar.
All are the belly's woof, my lads, and bread's the warp,
the body is a whirring loom that never rests,
and now that my song's ended, here's the secret, lads:
I'm starved! Stuff bread in my wool-sack, don't let me croak!"
He took his empty wool-sack then and went the rounds,
and all pressed close to give him gifts: one gave him bread,
another dates and flasks of wine, another meat,
ladies gave cinnamon flowers, widows threw him roses,
maidens cast quince and apples, boys cast honeyed sweets, 1392
and as he felt his sack grow heavy, he laughed and said:
"Farewell, my sack's grown pregnant and my heart swells so
you'd think, by G-d, that both of them were belly-brothers!
Besides, what do you think a song is made of, lads?
It's made—I swear it!—of old wine and lean goat's meat!"
He spoke, maids gazed and marveled, and householders laughed,
but though he seemed half-witted, eagles filled his eyes,
and though he touched no maiden, he enjoyed them all
and slept with all at midnight in the open fields.
But he was wed now to the four winds, and flung his lyre
beside his bloated wool-sack, then trudged on to fetch it
to other towns, a still unslaked, unsated beast.
____________________________________________

Mountains and rocks turned rose-red in the dawning light,
and the sun-drunken skylark with its tasseled mind,
confused by drinking too much light, burst into song--
heart, brainless soaring bird of air, wounded with light!
The more it sang the more it raged till the sun seemed
a pomegranate tree weighed down with fruit and flower
on which it hopped from bough to bough and pecked and sang
a tangled skein of song and wing. It pierced the light
and vanished, but its melodies in a light shower
still fell and cooled the scorching throat of flaming air.
____________________________________________

But the lone hurried athlete shook his ruthless head,
for though that spendthrift, his proud mind, would grant all things,
it would not give that greatest good of all things, Time.
Time was no mountain peak or thousand-year-old oak;
the head is a bright bubble, a teardrop filled with air,
above it the earth and heaven, lights and shadows play,
and when a light breeze blows, the head scatters and fades.
____________________________________________

Time slowly passed and the wheel turned, moons rose and fell,
earth stretched out like a fawn before the archer's feet
and he stooped down and stroked it with a mute caress.
At times he passed by sluggish streets, or flowering fields,
or yellow sands that like a tiger flicked in light. 5
Varied aromas, birds, and tongues of strange men changed,
flutes, dances, and streets changed, and different kinds of masks
covered the ancient G-ds and aroused the eternal fears.
Stones rasped like crickets in the burning day, till night
fell like a sudden sword and split the world in two; 10
then beasts, freed from the yoke of the flame-archer sun,
prowled from their secret lairs in hunger, silently,
and the celestial candelabrum blazed with light.
White-haired Odysseus walked and bid the world farewell,
but did not hasten, for he loved earth still and spread 15
his hands, his eyes, his ears and slowly said goodbye.
His leopard cub with her striped back loomed in his mind
so that he wondered where, in what deep grass she lay,
stretched on her back or playing with her spotted cubs,
and the archer sighed to think he'd faded from the heart 20
of his old friend who had dissolved like windless mist.
He walked in rampant suns and stood in vapid moons,
his shadows swung about him like a windmill's wings,
and in his heart he carried all his precious friends,
memory's wings, mute shades, dogs of the lower world. 25
Like a snow avalanche that falls from a high peak
and gathers new snow as it sweeps the mountain's slope,
then crashes, groaning, a snow-mountain of dread size,
the lofty man's mind rolled and swept all things before it.
____________________________________________

His mind swelled as he listened in the fishers' pubs
to skippers tell of lily-wonders that turned all
their native snowlands into crystals and snow-flowers.
One had thick reeking thongs that bound his oaken calves,
his slanting black eyes flashed with fire, and round his neck
he wore, for G-d and good-luck charm, a silver bear.
He talked, and shoals of shimmering fish came tumbling down,
mountains of seabirds rose, and their cracked eggshells tossed
beside the seashore foam like pure-white lotus blooms;
reindeer sped swiftly with their pearl-encrusted horns
that glittered in the nacreous mists of frozen fields;
seven curved necklaces of rainbows arched the skies,
snows glimmered with a thousand hues, and fingernails
and hands dripped with green, red, and azure precious stones.

As the world-wanderer listened, his mind burst in flame:
"I shall not drown in waves, nor shall I sink in earth
before these rainbows come to shroud my living form;
I've seen the peacock's azure, green, and golden plumes,
and now I long to see earth's snow-white gleaming tail!"
As the snow's captain talked, in the hushed pub there strolled
a plump G-d dressed in bearhides, thickly smeared with grease,
and all threw fat lumps in the fire to warm him, fed
him seals and hung smoked fishes round his grimy neck
as he munched lard with greed and reeked like a white bear.
Then the world-wanderer laughed, for speech was a swift ship
with bursting holds on whose curved prow there sat an old,
old hag with clacking tongue who screeched like a plucked hen,
and on whose deck the lone man sat to roam the world.
The second, slender, red-skinned captain laughed and brimmed
the brazen bowls with wine, and his long painted nails
cast rosy sweet reflections on the glittering cups.
"By G-d, at times the whole world seems like a strange myth,
the mind like a bewitched and pallid prince who flings
the hundred gold gates of a haunted palace wide,
all doors adorned with different knockers, varied signs,
but the mind holds key-clusters, opens and walks through.
Now, Captain, you've flung wide the white snow-covered door
with all its dazzling flakes and bears, its wild reindeer,
and the mind entered, that charmed prince, and cried with joy,
for it had never dared divine such deathless lilies!
But I was born in flame-drenched lands, on sun-scorched shores,
unlocked a crimson door, walked through a thousand gardens
of flowering pomegranate trees where flames are roses,
where all our seashores gleam with crimson-painted prows.

Our G-d's a cunning merchantman who roams all shores,
sells G-ds and G-ddesses with tiers of naked dugs,
sells magic charms, seductive paints, and healing herbs.
He's very rich; strong scent drips from his curly beard;
his fingers, ears, and nostrils gleam with garish gold,
his fleets roam all the coasts, and we're his cocky crew,
his sailors, boatmen, cabin boys and merchantmen,
and when we die, we spread our memories wide before him:
'Master, here's what we've sold, our profits and our loss;
cast your accounts and pay us what you owe us now.'
We don't talk with entreaties or with prayers at all
but only with 'I work, you pay,' 'Give me, I'll give you!'
Hades is a great shipyard where we build our boats,
splice ropes, calk gaping seams, patch up our tattered sails,
study the weather, then set sail for the living world."
____________________________________________

The lone man stopped before the trunk of a huge pine
and saw upon its topmost tip a lean and hungry crow
that perched and shrieked as though it wished to chase away
the lone woodcutter who had raised his shining ax.
"I like this dragon pine and its black fruit of crow,"
the lone man murmured, as he raised his stalwart arms,
but the whole woods resounded as the great pine shook,
and the black fruit on the high boughs yelled furiously: 790
"Murderous water-ghoul, don't strike! You'll wreck my nest!
If you hack out a cradle, cursed be the son you rock,
if you hack out a plow, cursed be the seed you sow,
if you hack out a ship, may it sink in windless calm
and toss you toward a coast where the sharp reefs shall eat you! 795
You fool, all trees have souls, and even crows feel pain!"
The crow wailed on, but the ax roared and drowned its shrieks;
at the first wound he gave, the lone man knelt with awe
and slowly sipped the fragrant blood of the old pine
that he might thus become blood-brother with the tree's good 800
ghost.

He hacked away three days to pile wood for his ship,
and the blue sea washed in and out and drowned his mind.
Dear G-d, to build one's coffin, to heap high the logs,
to come close swiftly to your tomb with each ax-cut,
to carol like a bridegroom blithely, to sink down 805
together with the sun and swim in the cool sea!
He thought how on sun-haired Calypso's distant isle
he had once swiftly built a ship to reach his home;
how sadly then the G-ddess sang, sweet, but in vain,
to keep him in her nets, in a G-d's deathless splendor, 810
and now, just so, he strove to leave the green-haired earth.
____________________________________________

One day a fisherman came close with his reed rod,
opened and closed his pale lips thrice, took heart and cried:
"Ascetic, I've a word to say, but don't get angry!
For sixty years I've thrashed and ached on the sea's brine,
my hands are stiff and slashed, my mind's a lump of salt,
I've seen triremes and freighters, arrowy skiffs and rafts;
some seemed like broad sea-turtles, some like sharp swordfish,
some sailed like nautili, and some like dolphins leapt,
but never have I seen a skiff like this you build:
I see a pitch-black coffin rising from its ribs!"
The flame-eyed boatman then with a calm gesture shook
the curled wood shavings from his beard and white mustache
and in the light his sad yet teasing voice was heard:
"Old man, I took a rule and measured my old body,
old man, I took a rule and measured my heart and mind,
I measured earth and sky, I measured fear and love,
the greatest happiness of all, the greatest pain,
and from my measurements, old man, this coffin came."
____________________________________________

He clasped his hands about his knees, then cast his eyes
upon the sand and sea like a long grasping net,
and his mind glowed, a rain-drenched mountain peak in sun.
His narrowing glance scooped up a small and spiraled shell
that gleamed on sand like a man's convoluted ear.
Slowly he reached his hand, picked up the little hutch
and marveled at that serpentine frail sheath for hours--
work of a secret love and patience, year on year,
that shaped it gently in the depths of the dark sea.
Ah, how it glowed like mother-of-pearl, like the brain's coils
that gathered every holy sound and strained to hear
a crab or lobster scurry past, a storm that burst
high in the water's infinite ship-battered blaze.
And now, behold, like so much trash the heavy breath
of the strong tide had spewed indifferently on sands
this wondrous seashell wrought with endless toil and care.
The archer pressed the empty shell against his chest
as though he clasped a son, and suddenly, dear G-d,
a flood poured from the shell and drowned his heart and mind.
Once more the mighty athlete pitied his old body,
pitied his calloused palms, his stiffened wobbly knees,
his feet that roamed the world, his lips that once had kissed,
and his eyes brimmed unwillingly, his dry throat swelled,
for his heart throbbed with pain that day and smelled the grave:
"O heart, erotic bed, where all day, all night long,
that loving couple, Life and Death, clasp tight, and kiss!"
He spoke, then dipped his white head in the sea to cool;
his mind, that great wreathed athlete, cooled then and distilled;
once more he stretched upon the shore and slowly talked
as though both old and new companions swarmed the sands:
"By G-d, lads, what a thing is man's remembering heart!
Now that dark shades have crushed my lustrous mind
I well recall that white coast where my boat was wrecked
and my crew's corpses sailed supine on waves, and I
was cast headlong upon the rocks and burst in wails:
'I don't want to live now in pain, let the waves eat me;
my heart is crushed with battling both great G-ds and man--
let me now cross my hands, dear G-d, and drown in waves!'
Then as I sobbed in my despair for Death to come,
a small, small bird with crimson bill flapped in the sun,
hovered, and perched on a black boulder, wagged its tail,
trilled twice or thrice with mocking glee, then flew away--
O bird, O soaring heart, who fetch a small grain-seed!
At once my exhausted heart leapt up with fortitude,
my entrails brimmed with blood and my bones filled with brain,
I saw the sea before me, the whole earth behind me,
and there, between them, man's soul sang with mocking glee
and on a dry black boulder hopped with blissful joy!"
Thus did the man of whirlpool mind speak to himself,
then rose, without awaiting words or counterwords
and, like the sinking sun, plunged headlong in the sea.
When black night fell at length and wrapped the drowsy world,
the lone man fell asleep, disburdened, cool of heart,
and hung like a grape-cluster high on the tall cliffs of sleep.

Odysseus dreamt that, followed by his leopard cub
as hunting hound, he stalked the woods to track some deer;
the earth grew wider at each step, the world's face changed,
cypress trees bloomed with roses, cedars sprang with lilies,
and all black stones were twined with fragrant jasmine locks.
Animals strolled through woods like hermits, two by two,
birds like pure harmless spirits soared and talked in light
and the hawk stopped and beckoned to the blackbird till
both perched on a fruit-laden vine and pecked at grapes;
the golden sun sat on a green sunflower's stalk
and gazed, love-stricken, at the earth with a coy smile.
When the game-hunter suddenly saw a roe-buck move
amid the shrubs, he knelt and drew his deadly bow
then sank his feathery shaft deep in the downy neck.
The deer sighed like a man, then knelt with buckling knees,
but as the archer rushed and grabbed the long-branched horns,
the wounded animal uplifted his large eyes
that ran with tears like fountains on a shriveled earth
and gazed into the slayer's eyes with mute reproach.
The mighty hunter shuddered and his mind leapt high
like a struck roe-buck that a secret arrow pierced,
and the two brothers gazed and wept in silence long:
"Alas, my arrow missed its aim and struck my heart!"
But as his bitter thoughts still dripped within his heart,
a savage leopard pounced on the stag's steaming flesh
and all at once fierce hunger rose in the archer's mind.
He leapt, and from the leopard's sharp teeth swiftly seized
the deer's fat thigh, then quickly cast it on the hearth
and sat cross-legged on earth and ate it to the bone.
Then as he wiped his beard and thick mustache, he said:
"A great and mighty tiger rules the living world,
I've never chewed before such lean and tasty meat."
He laughed, uprooted then the roe-buck's branching horns
and slowly all things vanished in his toiling mind
till in the black and devastated night alone
two fists shone as they shaped a new, most murderous bow.
When the sun sprang and struck the hunter's laden eyes,
he leapt erect and all his mind's taut bowstring twanged
as though he still held an unseen death-battling bow.
All day the great G-d-slayer chased the swifting stag
with its large horns that sprouted high within his dreams,
and then returned at dusk with empty hands, and slept,
supperless, but the stag rose in his dreams once more
and slowly, with proud steps, approached the hunter, bent
its neck and with its rough tongue licked the cruel crossed hands.
The archer felt the deer above him, its warm breath,
and did not move his hands for fear the startled stag
would flee once more to sleep's impassable forest crags.
____________________________________________

The old sun drowned at length in the blood-splattered sea
and the great sower stalked the sky and cast fistfuls
of stars in night's black furrows, and all sprouted, bloomed,
till light at daybreak came and swiftly gleaned them all.
The two still sat upon the beach, sunk deep in thought;
the boy forgot his mother who wept for him at home,
and the old man his ship and the fair wind that blew
and listened to the world's last voice with deep repose.
The Morning Star pulsed in the heavens, a flaming heart,
the ground was flecked with crystal flakes, the weeds with frost,
but slowly the sun strengthened as its light poured down
from tall crags like a river and drowned all the plains
till the sea raised her hands toward her first ancient love.
Odysseus placed his hand upon the young lad's shoulder
with a light touch, as though he feared to crush his bones:

"To think I hastened with swift pace to leave the world!
Time passes now, the North Wind blows, my swift ship leaps,
but yet I keep my passion reined and can't drink deep
enough of your strange words that herald love and peace.
I fought on earth, the zigzag path I took was drenched
in blood, I conquered till my backbone glowed with light,
and now I hoist red sails to keep my tryst with Death,
for he who still has hope puts his great soul to shame;
yet I rejoice that suddenly a nightingale
saw me traverse this shore and sang to say farewell."
The young lad sadly leant on the G-d-slayer's breast:
"The words you utter, brother, are most sad, most proud;
how can one man alone save his soul here on earth
unless all souls are saved together in all the world?
If one babe starves on earth, all of us die of hunger;
if one at the world's ends should raise his hands to slay,
we have all raised our hands, and we're all slayers too;
we're all twined in one root, we blossom in one soul.
Forgive me, brother, if my words now form a myth."
With gentleness the archer clasped the G-d-struck boy:
"Tell me your myth that the whole world may turn to myth."

The young boy smiled and with his sweet voice softly said:
"They say that once when a great king gave up his ghost
and his soul rose, he knocked on the Immortal's door.
'Who pounds my door?' G-d shouted. 'I,' the king replied.
'There is no room in Paradise for two,' G-d growled.
The king returned to earth once more where year on year
he lived like an ascetic, strove to save his soul,
then rose to heaven once more and beat upon G-d's door.
'Who pounds my door?' G-d cried. 'It's I,' the old king yelled.
'Descend to earth,' the voice roared, 'here is no room for two!'
He plunged to earth once more, strove for ten thousand years,
moaned 'Ah!' and 'Ah!' for the hard stone to blossom too,
then once again the old king took the sky's blue slope,
stood quivering by the sacred door, and softly knocked.
'Who knocks?' 'Father, it's You who knock on your own door.'
At once G-d's door gaped wide and the two merged in One!"
The archer for a moment stood in silent thought;
though the boy's voice was sweet, it could not dull his mind,
for his thought flashed on Margaro's most fragrant plot
and he recalled the cruel word he had planted there,
then gazed without compassion on the warbling mouth:
"And this last One, this One is also empty air."
But unperturbed, the tender fisher softly smiled:
"Body and mind, both land and sea, are smoke and air,
only this final One still lives and reigns as G-d,
as the pure soul that broods on the world's sacred egg."
____________________________________________

The sun sank, and the face of widowed earth grew dark
as though she wept because her lover was now leaving;
the shore sank, and the wounded light fought gallantly
on the tall peaks until it fell to night's assault.
The archer of the sun watched the world slowly fade,
and after many moons had passed above his head
and he was sailing through the world's vast hopeless snows,
he quite forgot that earth had passed from his glazed eyes,
and but one scene remained deep in his memory's pit:
once when he had skimmed close along some looming cliffs,
it darkened, all the silver-smoking waters dulled,
and as he looked high at the crags with head upturned
he suddenly felt thick drops of honey strike his lips. 1435
He licked his mouth, then cupped his hands against his eyes,
for high in a deep hollow by some wild fig trees
he saw an ungleaned honeycomb of monstrous size
that hung above the waste sea, slowly melting drop
by drop, hushed, useless, fading in the dark abyss of night. 1440
____________________________________________

The lone man spoke, then as the North Wind gently blew,
he seized the tiller, raised his head and saw night fall 130
and pour down in a black mist while the scattered stars
shone like far burning castles in the sweep of night.
Luminous flashing skates and phosphorescent fish
flame-quivered in the waves as all night long there rolled
the two profound vast rivers which surround the world: 135
the lecherous and night-wandering sky with its fish-swarms
that in deep silence pastures its unnumbered smelt,
and the vast sea with clustered stars of sperm and milt.
____________________________________________

"I've said, and say again--I've no quarrel with the world,
and if the mind, at my last breath, grow suddenly weak
and start to curse, don't listen, Life, the wretch is mad;
may you be blessed with all your laughter, all your tears!
Ah, could I mount in sun a thousand, thousand times,
I'd start the pitiless ascent once more, O Life,
the wails, the wars with wily G-ds and stupid men.
I'd wait for the love-pointing star to shine, I'd start
once more the night-embracements on the dewy grass.
I turn and gaze on all I've done or joyed on earth:
O Life, your sweetness is so great that if but one
drop more should fall, I'd lose my pride and burst in tears!"
____________________________________________

The lone man thus, with no vain boasts or weak reproach,
sped swiftly toward the South to keep his tryst with Death,
and his desires fell mutely on the waves and drowned
like lovesick girls for whom the world seems too confined.
The sea grew more serene and spread like mother-of-pearl
which dolphins ripped through now and then, but still it healed
and thickly poured with graceful tints of oyster shell.
One day at afterglow when the waves rolled serene,
rose-leaved and violet-misted in the cooling dusk,
the sharp world-wandering man's unfailing eyes caught sight
of some low-spreading rose isles made of coral stone.
No huts rose on the shore, no smoke rose through the trees
as the skiff drifted unconcerned toward those round disks
of the waste sea with their coarse sand and brackish water.
A few scant date trees darkly gleamed in the afterglow
with amber light, long-leaved amid their sword-sharp boughs,
and from the clefts of coral rock that steamed with heat
thick shaggy crabs and sluggish turtles rose and fell.
As the archer rowed by slowly down the shores, he saw
old sunken ruined cities, mortar-bound huge blocks,
and armor of a moss-green, rust-corroded bronze.
In row on row still stood, or fallen flat, the old
blind hulking G-ds hewn roughly from huge ancient logs,
within whose monstrous ears at night the bats gave suck
to their small fuzzy babes, and coarse-haired spiders hung
in empty nostrils and the eyes' black moldering pits.
Cracked and in ruins, the deathless lepers stood by waves
as vines twined round their thighs and rotted their black knees;
their eyes had fallen, their teeth had spilled on coral sand,
and now they spread their fingerless and crippled hands
in hopes a passing ship might see them and give alms.
But the G-d-slayer shook his head and curled his lips
and without pity passed the humped and leprous G-ds:
"Dark demons, we have suffered much in your vast hands
but now our turn has come to glean our glad revenge.
Smite without pity, soul! O hammer on anvil, strike!"
He spoke, and his harsh laughter shook the seas as from
the deep heart of a dazzling mist the full moon rose,
a huge and lustrous pearl wedged in its oyster shell,
and the wreathed athlete slowly slid within a glittering fog.
____________________________________________

Kneeling, he seized the tiller tight in his right hand,
pulled at the sail's rough rope with his left hand and fought 285
with silent courage, open-eyed, to reach and pass
safely at this dread moment mankind's last confines.
He heard one shrieking mountain rage and roar out "No!"
but "Yes!" the other answered in a tranquil hush.
At last he skimmed his craft along a windless peak, 290
and as his red sail passed beneath rough hanging crags
the mountains swayed with massive flocks of swirling birds.
The wild-game hunter laughed until the waves resounded:
"Oho! the dread scarecrow that guards man's last confines
is but a tranquil mountain of white eggs and birds!"
He pushed and slid his coffin in a pearly cave,
tied it with a rough hawser, climbed the craggy rocks
and took with him his piercing arrows and long bow,
for the birds swooped and shrieked till the rocks seemed to
shake.
Climbing on high with back bent low, he joyed to hear
the mountain slopes resound and flutter right and left
as though his shoulders sprouted with tumultuous wings;
eggs glittered in black hollows, the rocks smiled serenely,
and all the promontory moaned like lovesick doves.
The white-haired archer mounted still with bloody feet,
and when he reached a barren peak and turned eyes south,
his heart like a sea-eagle flapped its wings and shrieked:
before him spread an endless, mastless, sterile sea.
A freezing fierce wind blew, the sun hung in a mist,
and the great athlete's jaws began to shake with cold;
but as he searched for twigs to build a warming fire,
thick hail burst on the crags with a tumultuous roar
till his unbridled and rebellious head rang out
like a rough boulder in the harsh and pelting hail;
but he stood upright, growled, and mocked his barren head:
"Hey, white pate, blockhead, how much longer in this world
will the rains drench you, the snows freeze you, the suns scorch
you?
You've turned thick hide and stone! Haven't you had enough?"
____________________________________________

When he awoke toward dawn and saw the maidenhair, 325
the swift rock-swallows cooing lovingly with joy,
the pale cool light and honeyed sweetness all about him,
he shook to think he'd sailed into the land of myth.
His thoughts had fluttered far off to Calypso's cave,
Slowly his brain distilled, his thoughts fell into place, 335
and then the lone man yelled with joy amid the rocks
for now he knew he liked much better than all joys,
than even the act of love, to roam at the world's end,
to light huge fires upon the guardian dragon's peak
and gather eggs on its man-eating dark abyss. 340
When the cool weather cleared, the archer rigged his sail,
loaded his coffin with the loot of birds and eggs,
then laughed with joy and cried farewell to the world's last
frontiers.

He left behind bounds of the possible, all joys
of man, and thrust into a virgin sea where no
ship passed, no pilot soul had crossed her shoulder blades.
Ash-colored seabirds swirled and cawed about his mast
to marvel at this new swordfish with double fins
and the red upright wing that swelled in the cold wind.
At night in the man-murdering soul of the wild wastes,
as the blind boatman spread his pincers gropingly
on the dark waves, he felt the touch of shaggy claws.
"The sure reward of him who finds new roads is death!
My soul, don't cast your eyes about, don't cock your ears,
don't seek companions now, you've cut off from the herd;
cling tight, O soul, to the pure breath of solitude."
As the black current strengthened and the pointed prow
skimmed swiftly, frothing southward with no oars or wind,
Odysseus shuddered one cold dawn, for in his mind
the swift thought flashed: this was no current or plain sea
but an unleashed mute whirlpool that now swirled toward death.
"Ahoy, my gallant soul; don't whimper, swift-eyed girl;
life's but a song, sing it before your throat is cut!"
The pallid sun-cock rose with plucked and molted wings,
and as it slowly crawled and limped on the sky's rim
the archer gazed at his old friend with grief and mocked:
"One day amid my flocks I saw my stalwart ram
tup row on row of buxom ewes and then, drained dry,
crawl quivering with shrunk bags beneath a fig tree's shade.
O sun, you've also tupped a thousand shores and seas
and now stand shivering in the shadows with shorn hide!"
But all at once his laughter ceased, he cocked his ears,
for a deep bellow crushed the tempest-churning waves,
and the swift-dying man leapt up and thought he'd reached
the sacred pit of doom at last, the killer's mouth.

He cupped his hand against the sun and saw the waves
far off flash silver as they swelled and seethed with foam
while all about them flocks of savage seabirds swirled.
"Dear G-d, the wonders of the world are without end!"
He had not finished speaking, held in wonder still,
when a swift whirlwind of fish seethed and spun him round
so that his skiff plunged wildly as he dashed to seize
both sail and oar and push clear of the wrecking tide.
The sea turned stone as a thick hurricane of fish
with roe-filled bellies and white scales flashed swiftly by
while birds plunged greedily and gulped shoal after shoal.
The suffering man strove to head off the perilous flood
but stopped with gaping mouth and let his rudder kick
on seeing a huge beast astride the fish cascade.
Its mouth glowed darkly in the light like a sea cave
in whose vast pit swift shoals of little fishes plunged.
From the beast's nape a gushing spout of water sprang
in a rich gaudy rainbow scattering in the sun,
a water-mast on an exotic frigate's deck.
When in the tumult at long last the roar was lost,
the lone man clasped the marvel in his inner sea,
happy that in this final hour, before his eyes
would shut forever, his mind had seen this fierce assault.
He shut his eyes and smiled, for recollections crossed
his memory's dark ravines and drowned him in their flood:
the blind and silent river flowed of that ant-swarm
that once poured round his city like a swallowing death;
the blind moles who had sniffed the earthquake scurried past,
and stars fell which he dreamt one night had crawled like worms
and eaten all the last leaves of his sleeping heart.
____________________________________________

One dawn upon the waves he saw the first ice floes,
thick lumps of bobbing human heads that rose and sank,
that lightly tossed and touched his prow, then skimmed far off;
at the sky's rim the sun now rose at drop of noon,
rolled through the mists, exhausted, then sank once again,
unable now to mount the earth like a fierce bull.
But one damp dusk the lone man gaped with startled eyes:
the sun had sunk, but a white-yellow banner spread
and softly fluttered in the sky with silver fringe;
slowly a rich-wrought fabric rolled, ribbons unwound,
rubies and emeralds glowed and pulsing sapphires streamed
till at its top a saffron tempest burst in gold.
As the G-d-treading athlete skimmed through the sky's blaze,
myriad rainbows dangled from his crystal beard
and all his glittering coffin brimmed with precious stones;
when he spread out his hands, his fingers dripped with pearls.
It was as though the banner longed to seize the sky,
assault dark Tartarus, too, and take possession there.
Long vines of flame spread their curved tendrils through the air,
hung with grape-clusters of thick light, then slowly swayed
as though rocked gently by a warm erotic wind.
"I never dared to think I'd wear this lustrous crown,"
he mused, and skimmed through fields of Death adorned with
roses.

He hung his new stag-bow across his sunburnt back,
and both his black flints lightly scratched his crystal chest
as regal wreaths passed ring on ring above his head:
"Thus, when a mighty king returns from a great battle,
a dome is raised of myrtles, laurels, and red roses
beneath whose arch his hacked and reverent head may pass;
I've come from a great war, and all the arches bloom--
a thousand times well met, ancestral, lethal castle!"
____________________________________________

"O Sun, your light obstructs the myriad stars about you;
go off to your good-fated mother now for she
has strewn you tables of rich food, soft beds for sleep;
unyoke your snow-white steeds at last to browse on waves.
Don't weep to watch me disappear; I've cocked my cap,
for soon the lyres will ring, and my white bride will come.
Sink in your waves, don't see her, or your heart will break."
But still the sun refused to listen, and roamed in rings,
spun the white head with light, wove and unwove with rays
tall candles for the dead, and flaming silent wreaths.
The slim skiff gleamed and quivered in the unsetting sun,
tall icebergs broke off, far away, without a sound,
and slowly, slowly sailed, rose-red, on the green waters.
____________________________________________

"Ah, Death, how old you've grown, my dear, how white your
hair,
how much misfortunes and black cares have maimed your flesh!
Your face, like mine, bears the same slash in the same place,
wherever my flesh is scarred, your flesh is wounded too,
and there between your eyebrows a small worm lies coiled.
I bend my face above the water and see your face.
O Death, great Temple Sacristan, O faithful hound,
you've zoned my shadow like a shadow my life long,
rushed forward like a king, or lagged like a low slave;
how much you've suffered and grown old on earth with me!
Welcome, dear friend, lie down that we may rest together."
Death in reply but sweetly smiled and fixed his eyes
on the calm darkened eyes of the fox-minded man,
and the two gazed together silently for hours
and gently rowed on the smooth pearly threshing floor.
The sleepless sun caressed the two old heads until
their white and stubbly beards burned like a brushwood fire,
then it hung down like a gold tassel from their fox-fur caps.
The heart filled and could take no more, hands overbrimmed,
the mind's full flower turned to seed and scattered wide
with joy on the salt waves of the ancestral plain.
The lone man's mind burst open and his memories poured
like cascades down his temples in the vast solitude.
Behind him the Wheel softly, mutely turned, his brows
creaked, and Time, an ancient python, opened its mouth
and spewed all it had swallowed till they gleamed once more.
Odysseus shook with joy--he had not lost one drop
of memory, and rejoiced in all his myriad heads
that glittered in long rows, snow-white, jet-black, or gray.
An old man, white with years, stood in the sun, thick-boned,
and a mature man that scaled castles and clasped women,
or plundered sea-lanes by himself in rotting hulls;
on a high threshing floor a youth hurled a stone quoit,
his mind a rosebud still, with savage virgin leaves
as yet unfurled, and held his famous voyages
and his far-distant future deeds in leaves immured.
Still further back, the lone man watched his body fling
small boats upon the waves, in shape of a lone child
whose spirit like a fearless captain rode them all.
Then, as a suckling child, he seized his mother's breast,
bit its rose nipple deeply with a ruthless greed,
and as she laughed and wept, she felt this son of hers
would one day seize life's holy breasts and suck them dry.
The suffering man could trace himself no further back:
within his parents' bodies he had seethed like fever,
strolled in his father's loins past the betrothed one's door,
and as his virgin mother stooped with trembling fear,
she felt her son's feet kicking in her untouched womb.
His mother by her window sewed her bridal clothes,
and when she stooped, her locks fell on her working hands
as her swift fingers flew and the embroideries rose
from her small heart and spread and soared until they wrapped
her secret dreams with yellow and with crimson wool.
She stitched blue seas and ships and oars, black dwarfish men,
and her tall son, their captain, zoned with a red belt,
till her young maiden mind like water poured and flowed.
Thousands of years before all parents saw the sun,
he'd flashed like foam on water or like flame in caves,
or twined about a plane tree like a cunning snake.
He'd learned with patient stubbornness, with his great Mothers,
Silence and Earth and Sea, how he might mount at last
on loam one day in a man's form and live his life.
"Brothers, together now, let each one gird his arms,"
cried Death's antagonist to all his myriad forms;
"one of you take a child's toys, one a young man's youth,
another a man's lustful craze and two-edged sword,
and let the last one mount that pure-white steed, the soul,
and plunge to Hades like a proud slain conqueror;
my lads, it seems to me that Death has come full cycle now!"

He gathered all his memories, held Time in his hands
like a thick ball of musk and smelled it in the wastes
with flaring nostrils till his mind was drenched with scent.
Time melted in the lone man's fingers till his nails
dripped with aromas like the birds of inner Asia
flown from rich woods of nutmeg blooms and pepper root.
He was drained pure till life turned to immaculate myth,
and into tranquil princesses his fearful thoughts,
for in his mind dread G-d distilled like oil of roses.
And as Odysseus smelled the ripe and flaming fruit,
a sweet swoon seized him, all his entrails came unstitched
and his veins opened with unutterable relief
and all his body's armored net which once he cast
to snare the world--nerves, bone, and flesh--became disjoined.
The five tumultuous elements, that strove for years
to forge the famous form of the world-wandering man
shifted and parted now and slowly said farewell--
earth, water, fire, air, and the mind, keeper of keys.
Like five old friends who have caroused the whole night through
then stand at dawn by crossroads, for the talk is good,
and make half-hearted stray attempts to part at dawn
but find still more to say and stand with door ajar
and still hold hands and twine their fingers, lingering still--
thus like these five old friends who had caroused all night,
the archer's five strong elements, his five proud friends,
stood at the crossroads of his brain and could not part.

The mighty athlete then caressed his white-haired head.
"O nacreous, pearl-lined jewel-box, O brimming head,
in you the seeds of the whole world became one kin,
for trees, birds, beasts, and man's own gaudy generations
all rushed to sprout within you, not to plunge to Hades,
but now that they've all sweetly met and merged like brothers,
it's time, dear head, that you were smashed! Fall down, and
break!'
The lone man spoke thus to himself and with sad love
gazed on his elder brother who still lightly sat
enthroned on the dark prow, deep-scarred with ancient wounds.
How many ancient memories, what sweet conversations
strolled slowly through his mind, sailed on his speechless mouth!
The many-faced man smiled, and the same gentle smile
spread on his old friend's lips and turned to a wide grin
while his small flaming eyes gleamed like a black swan's.
The hunting mind of the G-d-slayer dashed in the fogged
and distant woods of memory and flushed out his pains
till his misfortunes cawed and scattered like fat quails,
and in remembrance his life's voyage burst and blazed
in his white head like a blood-trailing falling star.
He plunged and clutched from cliff to cliff, but once again
his fate's wheel flung him to another deeper gulf:
"O Tantalus, O great Forefather, blessed curse,
O bottomless mouth, O hoping yet despairing heart,
O hunger by strewn tables, thirst by cooling streams,"
he cried, and greeted hunger like satiety,
and his old grief like joys, when once he'd roamed the world.
"All G-ds and all my ships have rotted in my hands;
nothing remains of my proud friends but a small tuft
of gray hair in my fists, memories, and fragrant dust.
I clutched at trees to keep from plunging down the gulf,
but trees broke from their roots and left in my bruised hands
a slender quivering grass blade, a faint drifting scent.
As a last refuge, then, I clung to my only son,
but my son pitched me off unpityingly and rushed
to cast his parent in mid-road and reign sole L-rd.
With force and rage I rushed to leap man's narrow walls
and at a large-eyed vast idea clutched with pride,
but it climbed up my body's tree like a spry ape
and played with my head's apple, gently chewed and munched
till it had eaten all, then leapt to another tree
and plucked another's head and sucked another's brain.
I raised a great G-d on earth, but one blazing dusk
he sank like a large town in earthquake and thick smoke.
My hands shone in this world like tall fruit-laden trees
filled with great joy and gallant pride still unconsoled,
but now I bring them to wry Death filled with air only!"
____________________________________________

O faithful body, let most sweet compassion fall
like honey in your sated heart before you die,
for see, you turn your rough-hewn face, consumed by storms,
and slowly watch the light-filled world for the last time.
All's well! I gaze with cheerful calm on all my roads
through earth and sea, on all my roads through every heart,
and if the fire and water that first shaped me merged
once more on earth, a second, third, or a tenth time,
I'd take the same roads once again, the same sharp arrow
would twang unsatisfied from my right breast forever.
I'd drink all bitterness again, I'd glean all joys,
but from the start I'd strive each time to go still further,
to cross and pass all roads with swifter, greater strides,
for the soul has no ending, nor can thirst be quenched.
____________________________________________

The thousand-eyed sun ached still for its precious friend
and with warm tentacles caressed in gentle strokes
his hoary hair, his chest, his knees, his feet, his hands,
and as the hopeless warrior felt the sun's warm palms
and their smooth tenderness, he shook, his coffin swayed,
and both world-wanderers slowly, deeply said farewell:
"Aye, I'm departing, Captain Sun; take courage, friend,
don't weep, all pain's forgotten soon in forty days!
Strengthen your heavy heart and to your sad mind say:
'The sunlit game of life flashed well on earth and sea
and on the lambent air! Enough now, fare you well!' "
But the sun stroked the hard-burnt body speechlessly
and in its dulled mind sadly said farewell, and wept;
but the swift-minded man, guessing his friend's ache, cried:
"Dear Sun, a couplet in my throat coils like a snake
and I must shout it out, O Sun, or it will choke me:
'Sun, let's pretend I've never seen you! Ah doom, O doubt,
I've held a slender burning candle, and it's gone out!' "
____________________________________________

For hours the dying man watched the sun's lonely wheel
graze the sky's level rim, nor rise nor sink in waves
as a continuous dawn poured in the pearly sea.
Without once touching the smooth waters, the sun turned,
pale, hopeless, weaponless, about the archer's snow-white head.
____________________________________________

Odysseus slept and sank into the world's foundations,
he plunged in sacred roots and like an infant clasped
the great dark Mothers and with unslaked passion sank
his thirsty mouth with greed into their earthen dugs.
As his mind melted on his brows and poured like sweat,
his ears were plugged, the song died at the earth's roots,
and ancient Mother Silence spread her brooding wings
on the world's wastes as she had done before Life rose,
till the great archer with crossed empty hands, with trust,
surrendered to the crooked tide of nonexistence.
____________________________________________

Joy was a silent hopeless waste, and the sea poured
like frozen honey in a dream where ancient souls,
old outcries, old immense battalions, insect hordes,
huge honey-yearning molted wings, all Life's assault,
unmoving, mute, in one great mass now slowly drowned.
____________________________________________

The coward ax dropped from his waist and on the ice
left its old master weaponless in that dread hour;
his faithful heavy bow slipped from his shoulder blade
and left its Archer undefended, stark, alone;
and the thread snapped that bound the sacred chips of flint
till they rushed headlong to escape the grip of Death.
The North Wind passed and laughed to see him, stretched its
arms,
snatched off the hairy pelt that fenced his flesh and bones,
and left him stripped and blue-lipped on the seething sea
till all the spirits of the air pressed round and burst
with bells to jeer and taunt him with their silvery sounds.
White seabirds dipped, enormous seagulls swooped and wound
the pale death-stricken man in swirling loops and rounds,
and their swift nooses tightly bound and choked his throat.
Then the great wailing, death's high threnody, began,
and the pale sun drew close and burst in lamentation:
"Alas, alack, the mind's great eye is setting now!
I took great joy to light the world, to watch at lease
one free soul that still loved and understood my light,
but now, O upright wing, you molt, and I molt with you!"
The sea, too, heard and rose, and to her loved one called:
"Where are you going, beloved? Don't leave me widowed here!
With whom shall I play now at dawn or quarrel at night,
who's worth the trouble now to toss with smashing storms,
to batter his strong loins or cleave his hull in two?
Aye, Captain, take me with you, I shall miss our games;
let Hades brim with our embracements, our fierce fights!"
____________________________________________

Then the great maggot rose, that fat prophetic worm, 1284
its rosy body clad in armor, opened its jaws wide,
took the first bite in secret, munched, then gave the sign.
But the death-traveling boatman watched with open eyes
as his deep entrails melted, his flesh swayed like mist,
and water, earth, air, fire and mind all slowly snapped
and severed till each took the great road back once more.
His cords and nooses broke till the whole world was freed,
all pleasures soared and disappeared, pain found repose,
and the cadaverous sun leaned down to drown in waves.
____________________________________________

As a low lantern's flame flicks in its final blaze
then leaps above its shriveled wick and mounts aloft,
brimming with light, and soars toward Death with dazzling joy,
so did his fierce soul leap before it vanished in air.
The fire of memory blazed and flung long tongues of flame,
and each flame formed a face, each took a voice and called
till all life gathered in his throat and staved off Death;
then the hush roared, the soul leapt for a flash in light,
bodiless, naked, weaponless, and dashed to clasp
the dread souls it had loved when it once lived on earth:
"O faithful and beloved, O dead and living comrades, come!"
____________________________________________

Bowed down before the oak, the piper shook his nude
and pointed pate like a scared rabbit, his tears flowed:
"Where are you now, dear master, where are you roaming now?
By what seas does your tall cap sail, by what strange men
does your mind browse, that dread unsated elephant?
I turn a backward look and gaze on my past years:
alas, blue waves and islands, women and great towns,
hungers that thrashed our guts and wild carousing times--
all these I spurned and then betrayed, O wretched fool!
Ah, if the wind-sails of our life unwound once more
and the earth's myth began once more to twist and turn,
I'd never leave you, master, I'd stay to the dark end!"
He sighed and turned his rabbit's head to right and left;
below, in sun and rain, the Negroes' round huts gleamed,
the sky's rich rainbow-belt spread through the moistened fields
and a young maid came slowly to the old oak tree
and placed near the witch doctor's knees a tub of milk:
"Pity me, master, my son's sick and the dogs bark,
Death roams my neighborhood, and I've no other son."
But the sad piper's thoughts had sailed on distant waves,
and when the mother's pleas cut through his dazzling trip,
he frowned and with great wrath kicked at the proffered tub,
spilled all the milk on earth and cast a grievous spell:
"May you be cursed! The first-born son of earth and sea
now dies at the world's end! May the crows eat your son!"
He spoke, and his flute-dreaming ears brimmed full of sound,
long billows rose on earth, the stones burst into storm
and his thin temples sprouted oars and roared with winds.
At last when his sharp body's prow set sail and foamed,
a voice roared "Orpheus!" high, aloft, and the wretch crouched,
but a huge dragon's paw grabbed him by his bald pate
as though an eagle clutched a hare in its sharp claws.
Thus screeching, his whole body dangling, he was soon swept
to a long promontory struck by sharp sea winds,
and beat his pallid hands and roused his manly heart:
"Once more my nostrils flare, once more they drip with brine,
and my old throat once more perks up with fluting sounds.
Dear G-d, how good to launch on journeys in old age;
already I can smell the breath of our proud captain!"
He shrieked, but his old cricket's voice was suddenly cut
when he saw triple buttocks and double shadows fall
and heard a loved and long-lost voice boom like a cave:
"By G-d, dear piper, you've crouched at the old oak's root
and I've scorched earth's four corners, lad, to flush you out!"
Broad-buttocks roared with laughter and his throat grew firm,
his hands grew strong, he snatched his friend's pale form and
tossed and juggled with it on the distant foaming cape.
But cross-eyes smelled the moldy loam, and his eyes brimmed.
"Don't weep, my whimpering friend, I don't smell of the grave,
though worms drip from my eyebrows still and from my hair;
I rolled out on the new-washed soil from my great joy,
for when I heard my master's voice, my wits went wild!"
The sighing piper blinked his quivering bleary eyes:
"Dear friend, you're eaten by damp earth, you smell of death,
your flesh hangs down in tatters from your greening sides
and I see camomile and grass in your thick nostrils." 135
But glutton stopped the piper's mouth with his huge hand:
"Friend, why do you prattle so of death, why prate of tombs?
Filthy old gold erodes and stinking silver melts,
but the strong soul of a good man can never rot.
Here, place your hand, my brother, deep in my left side."
The piper's shriveled body shook as with pale hand
he groped in rotted entrails of his friend, their deep blue wounds:
"Here is no heart, dear brother! I grasp a lump of mud!"
But glutton wiped his mouth and flung down two small worms:
"Ah, don't distort things, friend, don't wail, I'm not yet dead!
Come, raise your feeble arms and grasp me by my loins;
for all we know, we're both dead, or perhaps we dream
we're darting over lands and seas like swifting birds
because we heard from far our dying master's cry;
friend, don't get lost, don't question, follow your dream only."
____________________________________________

The black-eyed maidens finally ceased, drowned in their dream,
their red heels glittered and then dwindled down the earth
as from some trees a pure-white elephant thrust through, 385
old and benign, with golden trappings and moon-charms,
on whom slim Rocky sat, holding a crimson spear
and fondling cockily his black and glistening beard.
Deeply he breathed the fragrant air and sang with joy:
"Ahoy, a warm breeze blows, the shriveled logs have bloomed, 390
pale seeds revive, burst in the earth, mount toward the sun!
Forward, my lads, the wheel's turned right side up again,
our nostrils fill once more with scent, our loins with blood,
and the hawk-heart has come and perched within our breasts.
Boys, I must sing a couplet now or I shall burst: 395
'Life, I can bear your pain no more, I'll turn to ghost,
I'll slip one night through your small keyhole and snatch you off!'"
____________________________________________

Sitting astride now on the snow-white elephant
with the brave handsome youth they'd longed for one warm night,
they laughed, for passion found its outlet in their dream.
With painted fingernails they held their zithers still,
two pomegranate blooms thrust through their breasts like
wounds, earth quivered like a cobweb decked with men and flowers,
and the birds shrilled like children in exotic nights.
____________________________________________

For a brief moment the old hermit in his grave
smelled the girl pass above him and tossed off his tombstone,
then hatched out like a crow, leapt on the ground once more,
though in his hand he still held tight a lump of earth.
Although the burning sun had set, the earth still boiled
and the old man leant against his cave to keep from falling,
gazed on the girl, then sighed as his throat brimmed with sound:
"Where are you going, O cool body, O twelve-year maid?
Tell me, O deathless water, and I shall come with you!" 543
When Helen turned and laughed, the earth swayed like a rose,
the old man broke in a swift dance, the earth's dust swirled,
her girlish laughter seethed like mad waves in his heart,
till, mounting his oak staff, he hopped along her side.
As the two forms ran side by side, spurred by desire,
a bitter yearning brimmed within the old man's heart:
Dear G-d, if only he could take earth's lanes once more,
he'd not chase kingdoms then nor empty ghosts of air,
for these are empty smoke that fades and leaves no trace--
he'd found a simple home, a cool and humble hut,
he'd be but a poor worker, an unbearded youth;
and this blithe maiden, mounted on her supple reed,
with her twin towering breasts that ripened on the cliffs,
he'd choose for his small wife to breed him stalwart sons,
for she, dear G-d, was all ghosts, all earth's burning towns.
The maiden glanced at the old man and slyly smiled:
"You seem like a great magician, the watchdog of Fate!
Bend down and read my palm, reveal my written doom;
ah, could I only know my fate, what man I'll marry!"
But as the old ascetic seized her lily hand
and touched her firm-fleshed body, he sank in a deep sea
and his mind leapt from wave to wave and disappeared.
As the coquetting wanton laughed, her hand sprang up
like cooling water in the ascetic's shriveled fist:
"It's no use scowling so, old man, I'm not afraid.
Fate blossoms on my bosom like a double rose."
Bent over the open hand he held, the shrunk old man
felt a sweet dizziness and fragrance strike his brain;
in her small palm he could discern huge suns and moons,
tall lilies filled with honeybees, and a deep hull
that sailed up rivers, floating through the lily-blooms.
"Dear girl, your life will flow serenely like calm water,
you'll stand like a pure lily in your husband's home,
your womb shall breed a horde of babes and clustered stars."
But the girl fingered her small lips with stubbornness:
"Old man, I don't want hordes of children, household cares,
untouched pure lilies, wretched husbands, peaceful hearths;
I'll cut another road, my heart seeks other skies!"
She spoke, then beat her horse-reed, dashed down toward the waves
and her shrill laughter swept the bank like gurgling water.
The old man sighed, stooped down, and let his dark tears fall
like downy eyes, warm, thick, and blurred, on the hard stones,
but the girl rushed ahead astride her lucky reed
and her braids flapped in the fresh breeze like leaping flames.
All things, both Life and Death, blew like a strong wind,
and the old ascetic leant toward earth in soft complaint:
"Aye, archer, cruel ascetic, you've still not left me alone
but clasp me in your brain so I can't rot in earth;
once more, as the sun warms and my bones burst in bloom,
you send me here, alas, a decoy girl to tempt me!
Dear G-d, when shall I ever find repose in the deep ground?"
____________________________________________

Like the blind fish that struggle in the ocean's depths
till their flesh melts to light and blazes through the dark,
thus did I rage on earth to turn all meat to light;
but now that little flesh remains, one drop of mud,
I'll summon my great servant, Death, to take it all,
I'll raise my hand in silence, and the world shall fade!"
But as he raised his glowing hand to summon Death,
an old man stooped with awe, kissed his frail feet and cried:
"Master, before you die, grant us your wisest word!"
Then the serene face shone with a faint smile that poured
on the dark earth around him like dusk's afterglow,
but he spoke not, his words perched in his heart like birds,
hawks, nightingales, larks, storks and cranes with bloody claws.
"Monstrous canary, yellow wing that skirts the cliff,
sing us your final song to free our trammeled souls!"
But then the Ascetic frowned and earth shook to its roots:
"Aye, hermits, open your ears wide, make firm your minds;
five roads run through my mind, five wings rise up to fly,
I weigh all and rejoice, I'm free to take all roads.
Shall I cry out with certainty, 'Here's to our meeting!'
or shall I say that we shall never meet again?
Shall my words fall like a serene and spreading stream
to water deeply man's dream-driven fantasies?
Or shall an eagle plunge and seize the heart till both
make love on desert sands and play for a brief hour?
Or shall I tell you the whole truth and crush your hearts?
Frail hope, despair, or beauty, or a sweet game, or truth--
I've passed all these five paths, I've opened a new road,
I've gone beyond the Word, cut through thought's foolish nets,
and fling you, for profound reply, a wordless smile."
He spoke, and his smile spread through all his glowing flesh
like the full desert moon's light-drenched and sweet caress,
and in his answer his disciples' brains were lost
as all their aching shoulders suddenly sprang with yellow wings.
____________________________________________

The old man shook his head and spoke with a soft smile:
"G-d, countries, laws and shores are smokes that fill your heads."

The elder comrade turned then to his youthful friend:
"We must have reached, my friend, the lotus-eaters' land.
They've tasted of the fruit and they've forgotten all;
they've reached the pure-white cypress tree before their death; 940
they've drunk the stream of Lethe till their heart's a sieve,
a cracked jug from whose slits the whole world drains away;
but I shall answer them and steady their dim brains.
Forgetful man, that burning tower was no mere dream
which our world-famous parents sacked one holy night;
and when on conflagration's peak their hands raised high
the flower of all Greece, rose-breasted Helen's body,
that was no mist, but a warm woman's giddy flesh."

The old man smiled, then to his silent comrades turned:
"Brothers, these are the imagination's famous lads,
the fish that flounder in the fishermen's thick nets
although they think they still skip free in boundless seas.
Their history is mind's vertigo, a traceless dream,
poor barren fields and azure seas, nude bodies, songs,
and nonexistent ghosts. Once, in their scattered wits,
they manned armadas, rigged their masts, sailed for a span,
scowled in the sun, then on some land discerned black signs:
'The foe, ahoy!' they yelled. 'There's the great town of Troy!'
then rushed at once pellmell along the phantom shores,
merged, parted, merged again with shades on empty sands.
Unhappy wretches, don't you know all these are games
of that sly G-d who sits on high and plays with men,
who builds his famous castles out of dew and light?
Your Helen passed like fleshless shadow, a loot of air!"
____________________________________________

The moment of full freedom loomed, the pale flame hissed
and gathered strength to leap far from the sputtering wick
as the translucent Saint now smiled and beckoned Death. 1065
But as he shut his eyes and his back touched the tree,
its branches brimmed with pure white bloom, a warm breeze blew
and the white flowers slowly fell, mute tufts of snow,
and covered all his body, his shoulders, feet, and head.
"It's Death!" some awed disciples cried in loud lament, 1070
but others laughed, broke into dance and clapped their hands;
behold, salvation's door had smashed and gaped for all!
The beasts and birds cried out, and from a lowering cloud
the G-ds stooped low to find a worthy paradigm
of how the soul is freed, to free themselves one day. 1075
Then the wedge-bearded man turned to his youthful friend:
"Why do these strange barbarians dance and laugh and weep
like G-d's fanatics who tread snakes or burning coals?
They soil the reverent face of holy Mother Earth."
But the youth sighed as his mind raced beyond the earth:
"This Sage, my friend, seems like a greater Dionysus;
sober amid earth's wine-vats now, ruthless and sweet,
he treads on man's heads as on clumps of purple grapes.
Blood splatters, rises to his knees, his loins, his chest,
then floods his brain like wine but cannot make it drunk,
for blood within him turns to soul and lucid light.
Now I'm ashamed I've brought our G-d as talisman, 1087
as though this Sage would condescend to fear the abyss!
Greece is a small and dwindling thought within his brain."
The elder spread his arms to guide the enraptured troop:
"Don't weep or wail, my brothers, and don't dance, keep calm;
our great Ascetic strides now past Death's sacred door,
his hands and feet grow bright, his body glows with joy,
the victor treads his native land, and the great walls
of mind and flesh fall silently that he may pass.
Flesh dances, and mind dances! Death is a swift dance!"
Both young and old, unmoving, marveled at the great
soul-warrior sinking now serenely deep in the earth;
the sun had hid himself, drops fell from lowering clouds,
long lightning flashes swept across the southern plains.
Earth, like a woman who had given birth and looks
at her first son with joy amid the rain, now crossed
her hands serene in silent happiness, and died.
But as Motherth was sinking in the cellared ground
he suddenly heard a dread cry tear the sky above him,
a swift noose seized and hung him for a moment high,
his soul and body hovered in the darkling air,
the faithful shrieked, and when they raised their eyes they saw
a dread spread-eagle soaring, screeching, through the sky,
and their great Sage hung dangling in the grip of savage claws.

It soared on southward, lost amid the twilight's flames,
and pallid Rala raised her worm-enraptured eyes
and hailed the flashing, fleeting bird with longing heart:
"Eagle, if only I had your wings or the great joy
to hang thus from your savage claws, to tear the sky
and reach my love at once to find out why he wants me!
From his hoarse cry, dread bird, I fear his life's in danger."
She bound her blood-soaked kerchief then to hide the mud,
bit hard her pallid lips to make them red as flame,
then, stooping low to stagnant waters, watched her face.
Ah, she'd grown ugly, lean, her eyebrows had thinned out,
only her downy eyes still moved with beauty's grace,
like jet-black water lilies in a deadly marsh.
How good to be returned to the warm breath of earth!
Once she'd betrayed her destiny, but never again!
Ah, she'd repented squandering her rich life in vain
for future joys and glories, to revenge the poor,
nor ever plucked the ripe fruit of a woman's tree.
What joy! Now that she'd scooped her flesh from muddy earth,
and copper anklets jangled on her sun-bronzed legs,
now that the proud two-headed beast leapt on her bosom,
she rushed toward her belovèd's voice and longed to fall
within his virile arms to bear him sons one day!
But now she stooped above the stagnant waters, fixed her hair,
and cried with lips that brimmed with cobwebs and complaints:
"They call me the Great Martyr, virgin with beast's eyes,
raise statues to my memory, altars to my name,
and worship my virginity, that cobwebbed gate!
I've squandered all my body for a great idea!
Ah, if I'd only known how heavy my breasts hung!
All I could not fulfill in flesh I strive to enjoy
as statue now, and glut myself with marble kisses.
Quickly, to be on time before the temple gates
burst open, I paint my lips and nails, I bare my breasts,
smear unguents on my limbs, twine roses through my hair,
and when the sun leaps and the panting faithful come,
then as the rites prescribe, unmoving, mute, I give
myself to warm embracements and to savage love;
but ah, the stone takes all the joy and gives me none!
But see, the statue's come alive now, the flesh flames,
so farewell, farmers, workers, here's my new path now;
I'm not a man to brood upon the world's good works,
for I was born a maid, and a maid's duty is love;
I rush to meet my loved one, for I've heard his call."
But as she looked in leech-filled waters, Rala saw
a thin shade hovering close that slowly raised its hands,
and all at once she knew, as though it were a dream,
what handsome youth stood at her side and gently smiled.
She bit her lips till the blood flowed, she seethed with rage;
so he'd come too, with baby faith and fleshless good!
She raised her face and ran on south, but the young man
slid calmly by her side and sought her company,
for night had fallen, he feared to walk in dark alone,
and a good word at the right time consoles the mind.

Lightly they sped on swift tiptoe from grass to grass
as on day-broken meadows the frail rolling mist;
the slim young fisher held his net slung down his back
and his illumined features shone with quiet joy
as though the waves had washed them or the sea had drowned them,
and his voice rustled like the sigh of blossomed trees:
"Rala, what joy to live with someone at your side
and to return home in such peaceful dusk as this,
slow and serene, your working tools clasped in your hands,
while G-d roams through the streets like a soft lullaby
and drifts through courtyards where shy virgins hear his song,
satisfied, mute, nor long for a man's lawless kiss;
to pass through the still night, to hear breasts rise and fall
like fluttering fledglings in their warm and downy nests!
Rala, the earth's a nest in the warm palms of G-d!"
But the unsquandering body with its flaming kerchief,
in whom desire for men at last had burst and swelled,
now swerved with wrath, and both her dust-grimed cheeks turned red:
"Ah, if there were a G-d in Heaven or deep in Hades
or even on this wretched earth, I'd stand before him
with a honed ax and curse him in a screeching voice!"
The startled fisher boy closed tight his ink-black eyes,
his sigh whiffed through green rushes like a fledgling's cry,
a fragile soul that swept through leaves when the wind blows.
But Rala pricked the squeamish lad with mocking jeers:
"Go pack, you fool! Your tasteless soup of camomile 1190
does not refresh my sacred heat or heal my pain!
Scat! Vanish in your skies! I don't want chastities!
Your pure-white lilies make me retch, your sweetness cloys,
I hold my breasts in both my hands and rush toward love!"
But suddenly, as the young maid mocked and hissed like snakes,
she heard a crunching sound in the fresh reeds, and turned:
behold, a female leopard with great wrath dashed out,
then reared her head, sniffed at the air, and raised her tail
as though she smelled a leopard's sweat in the South Wind.
Rala spread out her hand and stroked that stormy back:
"Thrice welcome, O twin sister, welcome, O twin eyes,
a thousand welcomes to the starved unsated flame!
I love you when you wag your tail and strike the world,
for you're starved always, and you long for human flesh;
let's run, dear sister, our great leopard shouts far out at sea!"

Thus like a stream the shadowy caravan rushed and swelled
as two by two all sped and merged on sea, air, land;
old comrades met and merged nor parted ever again,
Phida and Rala twined as friends, pale Krino dashed
from her black bull and fell in Helen's girlish arms,
sweet Margaro and Diktena strolled arm in arm,
all lightly swayed from peak to peak at the wind's bidding.
The Cretan mistress, happy in her youth, turned first:
"Dear friend, we're walking now toward the unsetting sun,
its holy light drips on our flesh and flows like honey;
now close your eyes to enjoy the warm hands of our G-d."
Margaro turned, shut her long lashes, and then smiled
as on the air she smelled the archer's sulphurous breath:
"Ah, hold me on earth forever in your warm embrace!"
Her full lips slowly ceased to flutter their red wings 1220
and her words vanished like sweet bees in flowers lost;
then the two bodies, vowed to arts of love, walked down
the azure shores, light-heeled and silent, sun-caressed.
The sun took fright as the earth darkened, showers whirred,
and all the wedding guests, that sweet parade of shadows, 1225
nude breasts and crimson lips and hairy arms and thighs,
cooled weary feet at length on the dark waves and raised
pellucid hands on high to scan the distant sea:
"Where is our captain now, dear G-d? Who called for help?
There spreads a waste and desolate sea, and no tall cap's in sight!"

In a deep daze beyond them, on the other shore,
their captain stood, straight, silent, on his mount of snow,
his white beard hung with crystal ice, his lips dark blue,
and gazed far out at sea as his heart called for help.
The leader's flesh dissolved and poured in gaping earth, 1235
but his deep yearning tore through mountains, plunged to Hades,
then seized the loved damp clay till flesh once more congealed,
till that wild bird, the soul, soared free and once more built
its nest in the sun's beams with flesh and blood and dreams.
His comrades yelled from shores, in haste to seize once more 1240
at oars, love, war, their old tasks in the savage world,
and their great leader felt their haste, his heart leapt high;
he saw the caravan coming, heard the joyous bells
and smelled the myriad fragrances that Granite brought;
he saw broad-buttocks, decked in his canary cloak,
bearing the piper on his shoulders like a kid
that once had wandered from the flock and now returns;
his nostrils flared and sniffed the sweet and downy maids
like bitter rhododendrons in cold crystal air.
Turning, he saw old Captain Clam, and hailed his friend:
"Thrice welcome! Health and joy! Welcome! There are no ports,
there's no more parting, Captain Clam, to scorch our hearts!
What were our voyages till now on mud-drenched earth
whose shores constrained us always and whose vile stench choked us?
With Death for pilot here we sail on shoreless seas, 1255
in our strong ship of flesh we sail the deathless waves,
and all we've longed for on vile earth sits on our mast
and warbles to our minds, a golden male canary.
A thousand welcomes to my crew, my dolphin swarm!
All's well! I count and count again, not one soul's missing!
Quick with your hands! Unload the great king's golden camels,
for I smell figs and grapes, my lads, my memory brims
and welcomes fruit I've loved. Don't let one small grape fall,
hang all upon our masts until our hearts revive.
You've twined a spray of basil on my snow-white head.
I see a blood-soaked lyre that sails the crystal air,
our Prince Elias' armor, and I'll pluck its chords
and play Life's great refrains to keep Death entertained.
Forward, belovèd forms, small branches of my soul,
O mind's starved tentacles, cling to the mizzenmast,
a strong wind blows once more and our hearts swell like sails!"
Then their old captain stooped and all his friends rushed up;
some clutched his heavy hands and clambered swift aboard,
some gripped the icy slope and climbed up step by step,
some sat in a closed ring and plied their shadowy oars.
Rocky enthroned his elephant on the icy prow,
Krino embraced her bull and pushed him tenderly
to step on the snow-ship that both might never part;
on the cold crystal Helen sat, slim-throated swan,
and Rala fell at the clear body's frosted feet
and clasped them with her bloody and mud-splattered hands.
The seven-souled man then stood upright, hailed his troop,
caressed the women's hair, pale Rala's savage lips,
the yet still virgin and crisp throat of the child, Helen,
then softly touched their shoulders, stroked their moldering backs,
and welcomed his dear comrades in his ample brain
as though they were huge silent thoughts that wrapped him
round.
He heard hoarse battle cries in his dream-taken mind,
cool laughter burst and flaming banners flapped in air,
hands groped to find his hands in sun and to hold tight.
As his dog, Argus, licked his feet and warmed his legs,
earth's hot breath rose and mounted till it reached his heart,
and as he stretched his empty hands to stroke his dog,
his crystal frigate shook and swerved in the cold foam.
He raised his eyes and joyed to see his three great forebears
tread stanchly on his frozen deck and plant themselves
in a straight row of three aloft, his ship's tall masts.
He wished to speak, but the maids felt his deep desire
and wreathed the limbs, beards, chests of the three living masts
with necklaces of pomegranates, grapes and figs
until the death-ship like a hanging garden glowed.
The cricket who had perched one dawn on his right shoulder 1302
as the two chatted and lunged down the road together
now smelled the figs and grapes, then spread its silver wings,
clung to the lone man's beard and burst in rasping song.
The three great forebears dipped and swayed, the three masts
creaked,
winds blew from all the world's four corners, the ship moved,
and as the dying man's mind swayed, the whole world swayed,
but the old captain stood erect on his white prow
and cupped his hands above his eyes, scanned all the sea,
and his heart yearned for his most faithful final friend:
"I shall not leave until you come with your gold cap,
your playthings in your hands, and climb this icy deck;
our voyage is most long and the mind wants to play."
As thus he murmured, casting far his sun-glad glance,
a warm soft body suddenly crouched beside his feet,
and when the great death-archer looked he saw entwined
and panting there a curly-haired sly Negro boy;
sweat from his armpits dripped, and in his palms he held
seeds of all kind: birds, beasts, trees, sorrows, joys and men;
he also held the mind's huge eggs: dread G-ds and myths,
great thoughts and virtues, freedoms, loves, and gallant deeds.
The seven-souled man saw the Tempter and laughed slyly,
their cunning glances crossed and juggled in the air,
their laughter spread to their ears' roots, and their long locks,
the white, the black, caught fire and leapt in crystal air.
Thus the two comrades talked in silence, eye to eye,
and as the Negro lad and the mind-spinner laughed,
both turned and caught in their eyes' nets the crew, the ship,
the destitute and emerald sea, the mournful sun, 1330
all end and all beginning, present, future, past.
They played with the earth's and the mind's seeds at odd and
even,
sometimes they merged and turned to a forked flame in sun,
sometimes the great world-mockers parted and laughed slyly.
At length the myth grew drowsy, curled by the hearth asleep, 1335
and the world folded its vast wings and dropped its head;
then the great hybrid mind cast tongues of flame and light,
soared high and plunged, rushed through the crossroads of the
flesh,
and sat, almighty, on the body's fivefold roads.
Its glance encircled the whole world, it laughed and thought: 1340
"I shall create men, towns, and G-ds, I shall rig ships,
I shall seize clay and wings and air to shape a world,
I shall seize clay and wings and air to shape all thoughts,
we'll play in sunlight a brief hour and then push on."
His mind now danced and cackled on the green-haired earth; 1345
glutted with loam, he scorned it, soared on high serenely
and blew to scatter life's toy down the hollow winds.
"I'll strip beasts of their armor, I'll smash G-ds and men,
I'll turn all thoughts once more to mud and wings and air,
I'll flip my hands, and all great towns shall tumble down; 1350
good was the game we've played on the world's emerald grass!"
Slowly the curly-headed black boy closed his eyes
and dropped his head upon his chest, then clasped his knees
and like a weary fledgling wrapped his wings for sleep.

In pity for the lad, the great ascetic stooped
and fondled the thick lips and the drenched curly hair,
and then the Negro boy, that cunning charming spirit,
opened his dark eyes slightly, glanced at his old friend,
then shuddered as he saw the world-destroyer's orbs.
They whirled like deep dark funnels where the whole world spun,
within them all earth's creatures danced, his comrades yelled,
and the snow-flagship with a roar hauled up its sails.
The mighty athlete slowly fondled his sly spirit, 1363
and his dark palms ate up its airy flesh with stealth;
its dark cheeks sank, its black sun-nourished eyes dropped out,
its thick lips rotted, still unslaked, its ears disjoined,
its cold skull glittered, bald and smooth in the afterglow.
The frontier guard then smiled and hung the Negro boy
on the mid-mast as scarecrow for the lower world.
Slowly his glance caressed all things for the last time;
the hour had come to fling his laughter in farewell,
and his throat rose and laughed, his frigate leapt erect,
figs and grape-clusters swayed on his ancestral masts,
the sailors seized their oars, the billows boomed and roared,
and all the women sang farewell to the lost world.
The piper sat astride the prow and placed the mind's
shade-smothered flute with skill against his breathless lips
till a faint tune rose distantly like a night shower
pelting with cackling laughter on a lover's roof.
Erect by his mid-mast amid the clustered grapes,
the prodigal son now heard the song of all return
and his eyes cleansed and emptied, his full heart grew light,
for Life and Death were songs, his mind the singing bird.
He cast his eyes about him, slowly clenched his teeth,
then thrust his hands in pomegranates, figs, and grapes 1385
until the twelve G-ds round his dark loins were refreshed.
All the great body of the world-roamer turned to mist,
and slowly his snow-ship, his memory, fruit, and friends
drifted like fog far down the sea, vanished like dew.
Then flesh dissolved, glances congealed, the heart's pulse 1390
stopped,
and the great mind leapt to the peak of its holy freedom,
fluttered with empty wings, then upright through the air
soared high and freed itself from its last cage, its freedom.
All things like frail mist scattered till but one brave cry
for a brief moment hung in the calm benighted waters: 1395
"Forward, my lads, sail on, for Death's breeze blows in a fair
wind!"
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