TW FOR G0RE ISH AGAIN [eye goodbye] AND BRIEF EMETOPHOBIA WARNING Nightfall brought him back, herding his woolly sheep and he quickly drove the sleek flock into the vaulted cavern, rams and all—none left outside in the walled yard—his own idea, perhaps, or a god led him on. Then he hoisted the huge slab to block the door and squatted to milk his sheep and bleating goats, each in order, putting a suckling underneath each dam, and as soon as he'd briskly finished all his chores he snatched up two more men and fixed his meal. But this time I lifted a carved wooden bowl, brimful of my ruddy wine, and went right up to the Cyclops, enticing, 'Here, Cyclops, try this wine—to top off the banquet of human flesh you've bolted down! Judge for yourself what stock our ship had stored. I brought it here to make you a fine libation, hoping you would pity me, Cyclops, send me home, but your rages are insufferable. You barbarian—how can any man on earth come visit you after this? What you've done outrages all that's right!' At that he seized the bowl and tossed it off and the heady wine pleased him immensely—'More'—he demanded a second bowl—'a hearty helping! And tell me your name now, quickly, so I can hand my guest a gift to warm his heart. Our soil yields the Cyclops powerful, full-bodied wine and the rains from Zeus build its strength. But this, this is nectar, ambrosia—this flows from heaven!' So he declared. I poured him another fiery bowl—three bowls I brimmed and three he drank to the last drop, the fool, and then, when the wine was swirling round his brain, I approached my host with a cordial, winning word: 'So, you ask me the name I'm known by, Cyclops? I will tell you. But you must give me a guest-gift as you've promised. Nobody—that's my name. Nobody—so my mother and father call me, all my friends.' But he boomed back at me from his ruthless heart, 'Nobody? I'll eat Nobody last of all his friends—I'll eat the others first! That's my gift to you!' With that he toppled over, sprawled full-length, flat on his back and lay there, his massive neck slumping to one side, and sleep that conquers all overwhelmed him now as wine came spurting, flooding up from his gullet with chunks of human flesh—he vomited, blind drunk. Now, at last, I thrust our stake in a bed of embers to get it red-hot and rallied all my comrades: 'Courage—no panic, no one hang back now!' And green as it was, just as the olive stake was about to catch fire—the glow terrific, yes—I dragged it from the flames, my men clustering round as some god breathed enormous courage through us all. Hoisting high that olive stake with its stabbing point, straight into the monster's eye they rammed it hard—I drove my weight on it from above and bored it home as a shipwright bores his beam with a shipwright's drill that men below, whipping the strap back and forth, whirl and the drill keeps twisting faster, never stopping—So we seized our stake with its fiery tip and bored it round and round in the giant's eye till blood came boiling up around that smoking shaft and the hot blast singed his brow and eyelids round the core and the broiling eyeball burst—its crackling roots blazed and hissed—as a blacksmith plunges a glowing ax or adze in an ice-cold bath and the metal screeches steam and its temper hardens—that's the iron's strength—so the eye of the Cyclops sizzled round that stake! He loosed a hideous roar, the rock walls echoed round and we scuttled back in terror. The monster wrenched the spike from his eye and out it came with a red geyser of blood—he flung it aside with frantic hands, and mad with pain he bellowed out for help from his neighbor Cyclops living round about in caves on windswept crags. Hearing his cries, they lumbered up from every side and hulking round his cavern, asked what ailed him: 'What, Polyphemus, what in the world's the trouble? Roaring out in the godsent night to rob us of our sleep. Surely no one's rustling your flocks against your will—surely no one's trying to kill you now by fraud or force!' 'Nobody, friends'—Polyphemus bellowed back from his cave—'Nobody's killing me now by fraud and not by force!' 'If you're alone,' his friends boomed back at once, 'and nobody's trying to overpower you now—look, it must be a plague sent here by mighty Zeus and there's no escape from that. You'd better pray to your father, Lord Poseidon.' They lumbered off, but laughter filled my heart to think how nobody's name—my great cunning stroke— had duped them one and all. But the Cyclops there, still groaning, racked with agony, groped around for the huge slab, and heaving it from the doorway, down he sat in the cave's mouth, his arms spread wide, hoping to catch a comrade stealing out with sheep—such a blithering fool he took me for!
But I was already plotting...what was the best way out? how could I find escape from death for my crew, myself as well? My wits kept weaving, weaving cunning schemes—life at stake, monstrous death staring us in the face—till this plan struck my mind as best. That flock, those well-fed rams with their splendid thick fleece, sturdy, handsome beasts sporting their dark weight of wool: I lashed them abreast, quietly, twisting the willow-twigs the Cyclops slept on—giant, lawless brute—I took them three by three; each ram in the middle bore a man while the two rams either side would shield him well. So three beasts to bear each man, but as for myself? There was one bellwether ram, the prize of all the flock, and clutching him by his back, tucked up under his shaggy belly, there I hung, face upward, both hands locked in his marvelous deep fleece, clinging for dear life, my spirit steeled, enduring...So we held on, desperate, waiting Dawn's first light. As soon as young Dawn with her rose-red fingers shone once more the rams went rumbling out of the cave toward pasture, the ewes kept bleating round the pens, unmilked, their udders about to burst. Their master now, heaving in torment, felt the back of each animal halting before him here, but the idiot never sensed my men were trussed up under their thick fleecy ribs. And last of them all came my great ram now, striding out, weighed down with his dense wool and my deep plots. Stroking him gently, powerful Polyphemus murmured, 'Dear old ram, why last of the flock to quit the cave? In the good old days you'd never lag behind the rest—you with your long marching strides, first by far of the flock to graze the fresh young grasses, first by far to reach the rippling streams, first to turn back home, keen for your fold when night comes on—but now you're last of all. And why? Sick at heart for your master's eye that coward gouged out with his wicked crew?—only after he'd stunned my wits with wine—that, that Nobody .. . who's not escaped his death, I swear, not yet. Oh if only you thought like me, had words like me to tell me where that scoundrel is cringing from my rage! I'd smash him against the ground, I'd spill his brains—flooding across my cave—and that would ease my heart of the pains that good-for-nothing Nobody made me suffer!' And with that threat he let my ram go free outside. But soon as we'd got one foot past cave and courtyard, first I loosed myself from the ram, then loosed my men, then quickly, glancing back again and again we drove our flock, good plump beasts with their long shanks, straight to the ship, and a welcome sight we were to loyal comrades—we who'd escaped our deaths—but for all the rest they broke down and wailed. I cut it short, I stopped each shipmate's cries, my head tossing, brows frowning, silent signals to hurry, tumble our fleecy herd on board, launch out on the open sea! They swung aboard, they sat to the oars in ranks and in rhythm churned the water white with stroke on stroke. But once offshore as far as a man's shout can carry, I called back to the Cyclops, stinging taunts: 'So, Cyclops, no weak coward it was whose crew you bent to devour there in your vaulted cave—you with your brute force! Your filthy crimes came down on your own head, you shameless cannibal, daring to eat your guests in your own house—so Zeus and the other gods have paid you back!' That made the rage of the monster boil over. Ripping off the peak of a towering crag, he heaved it so hard the boulder landed just in front of our dark prow and a huge swell reared up as the rock went plunging under—a tidal wave from the open sea. The sudden backwash drove us landward again, forcing us close inshore but grabbing a long pole, I thrust us off and away, tossing my head for dear life, signaling crews to put their backs in the oars, escape grim death. They threw themselves in the labor, rowed on fast but once we'd plowed the breakers twice as far, again I began to taunt the Cyclops—men around me trying to check me, calm me, left and right: 'So headstrong—why? Why rile the beast again?' 'That rock he flung in the sea just now, hurling our ship to shore once more—we thought we'd die on the spot!' 'If he'd caught a sound from one of us, just a moan, he would have crushed our heads and ship timbers with one heave of another flashing, jagged rock!' 'Good god, the brute can throw!' So they begged but they could not bring my fighting spirit round. I called back with another burst of anger, 'Cyclops—if any man on the face of the earth should ask you who blinded you, shamed you so—say Odysseus, raider of cities, he gouged out your eye, Laertes' son who makes his home in Ithaca!' book 9 of the odyssey lines 376-562, translated by Robert Fagles and brought to you by Myzus Persicae
