Poets Translate Poets: A Hudson Review Anthology (23 page)

as the fl ame went up from the Holy Orgy,

bloody and from the fat oak logs,

sweat broke from his skin,

the shirt stuck to him, like it was glued,

shrinking in on all of his joints

as if made by someone who knew how to do it.

Gnawing into his bones, it seemed to be,

dirty snake poison gave him convulsions,

seemed like it was biting with hate.

And he howled for the miserable Likhas

who wasn’t guilty. You were.

To know who’d hatched the shirt trick.

And Likhas said he had brought it as it was

fi xed up and given him.

Th

en the stuff got another worse grip on him

and he grabbed Likhas by the foot,

twisting his ankle,

and threw him out off onto a boulder

that stuck up out of the breakers.

Hair! Brains came out of the skull

mixed with blood.

Th

e whole crowd groaned:

one dead, another stark raving.

Nobody dared to come near him. Th

ere he was

on the ground roaring, or groaning when

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he reared part way up, and the rocks echoing

from Locris to Euboea,

between the crags and the sea-cliff s.

Till he was clean worn out, writhing on the ground,

moaning, and cursing his marriage bed,

cursing you, and that he’d been fool enough

to get you from Oineus

to ruin his life. Th

e one woman.

Th

en with his eyes screwed up from the smoke

that came out of him

and tears running down, he caught sight of me

and called for me:

“Don’t try to keep out of this,

even if you have to die with me.

Get me out of here

to somewhere, anywhere, where no one can see me.

Get me out of here, quick. I don’t want to die here.”

Th

at’s what he told me.

So we put him into the hollow of the boat

and brought him to the mainland,

hardly any more noise coming out of him

but still in convulsions.

You’ll see him pretty soon,

living or dead.

Th

at, my dear mother, is what you have thought up

to do to my father,

Hell take you, and the Furies, and do you right.

Justice, eh, Justice, if . . .

lot of justice you had for me!

You spewed it out when you killed

the best man on earth,

what you see henceforth will be of a diff erent kind.

S opho c l e s
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[days a i r

exit
.]

k ho: Why does she go so quietly?

Has she no answer?

h y l : Let her go. And a nice wind take her far enough

. . . out of sight,

and another label to keep up her maternal swank,

fi ne mother she is, let her de-part

in peace . . .

and get some of the pleasure she has given my father.

k horo s (
low cello merely sustaining the voice
):

OYEZ:

(
Str
. 1)

Th

ings foretold and forecast:

Toil and moil.

God’s Son from turmoil shall

—when twelve seed-crops be past—

be loosed with the last,

his own.

Twining together, godword found good,

Spoken of old,

as the wind blew, truth’s in the fl ood.

We and his brood see in swift combine,

here and at last that:

Amid the dead is no servitude

nor do they labour.

(
contrabassi & drums muffl

ed
)

LO, beneath deadly cloud

(
Ant
. 1)

Fate and the Centaur’s curse, black venom spread,

Dank Hydra’s blood

Boils now through every vein, goad aft er goad

from spotted snake to pierce the holy side,

nor shall he last to see a new day’s light,

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Black shaggy night descends

as Nessus bade.

WHAT MOURNFUL case

(
Str
. 2)

who feared great ills to come,

New haste in mating threatening her home,

Who hark’d to reason in a foreign voice

Entangling her in ravage out of choice.

Tears green the cheek with bright dews pouring down;

Who mourns apart, alone

Oncoming

swift ness in o’erlowering fate

To show what wreck is nested in deceit.

LET the tears fl

ow.

(
Ant
. 2)

Ne’er had bright Herakles in his shining

Need of pity till now

whom fell disease burns out.

How

swift on Oechal’s height

to take a bride.

Black pointed shaft that shielded her in fl ight,

Attest

Th

at

Kupris stood by and never said a word,

Who now fl ares here the contriver

manifest . . .

and

indiff erent.

[
Th

e dea ex machina, hidden behind a gray gauze in her niche, is lit up

strongly so that the gauze is transparent. Th

e apparition is fairly sudden,

the fade-out slightly slower: the audience is almost in doubt that she has
appeared
.]

½ k ho: Am I cracked, or did I hear someone weeping?

In the hall?

Did you hear it?

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2 n d ½ k ho: Not a muttering, but someone in trouble,

wailing,

started again inside there.

[
Enter
n u r se .]

½ k ho: Look,

look at the old woman’s face. Something awful,

it’s all twisted up.

n u r : Children, children,

no end to the troubles from sending

that present to Herakles.

k ho: More, you mean more?

n u r : She’s gone. . . . . . . . . . .Daysair,

Th

e last road of all roads

. . . without walking.

k ho: What! Dead?

n u r : Th

at’s all. You heard me.

k ho: You mean the poor girl is dead?

n u r : Yes, for the second time. Yes.

k ho: Poor thing. How awful. But how . . .

How is she dead?

n u r : In the most violent . . .

k ho: But how, say how, woman.

How did it happen?

n u r : Did it herself,

ripped herself open.

k ho: But she crazy? What did she do it with?

How did she do it all by herself?

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Dying one aft er another.

n u r : Got hold of a sword, a roaring big sword.

And a sharp one.

k ho: But did you see it, you fool,

see this outrage?

n u r : Saw it. I wasn’t far off .

k ho: What? How? Go on and tell us.

n u r : Did it herself. With her hands.

k ho: But what do you mean?

n u r : Plain fact. What you can see for yourself.

k ho: Th

at new girl’s doin’ it.

I’ll say she’s eff ective.

Bride is she, and a fury. Holy Erinyes!

n u r : And then some. You’d feel it more

if you’d seen it near to.

k ho: But has a woman got the strength in her hands?

And to stand it?

n u r : Terrible, you can believe me. She came in alone

and saw the boy in the hall preparing the hearse-litter

to fetch back his father.

She hid herself down back of the altar,

sank down there groaning because her brood had deserted her.

Th

en pitifully stroking1 the things she had used before,

1. Two thousand years later the Minoru had developed a technique which permitted the direct presentation of such shades by symbolic gesture. In Sophokles’ time it had to be left to narration.

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went wandering through the best rooms—

didn’t know I could see her, from a sort of kink in the wall—

drawing her hands over the things she was used to.

Th

en came on one of the maids whom she liked,

and with the look of doom on her

cried to her daemon, that she was more childless

than any woman. Th

en stopped. And of a sudden

ran into Herakles’ bed room, and threw her cloak

onto Herakles’ bed, spread it out like a coverpane,

then threw herself onto it and lay there quiet

for a moment as if asleep.

Choking with tears, then: “Bride’s-bed,

good-bye my bride’s-bed, never again

folded

together!”

And she ripped the dress all off her left side

and the gold clasp with it.

I ran for Hyllos, but she was too quick,

she had jammed a sword side-ways

through her liver into the heart, when we got there,

two-edged.

Th

e boy screamed

and blamed himself for having driven her to it.

Father, mother, all in one day.

He’d found out that she’d only done what

that animal told her,

hadn’t meant any harm.

Too pitiful he was. Sobbing and holding her in his arms.

You can’t count on anything for tomorrow,

got to wait till today is over.

k horo s (
declaimed
): (
Str
. 1)

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TORN between griefs, which grief shall I lament,

which

fi rst? Which last, in heavy argument?

One wretchedness to me in double load.

DEATH’S in the house,

(
Ant
. 1)

and death comes by the road.

(
sung
)

(
Str
. 2)

THAT WIND might bear away my grief and me,

Sprung from the hearth-stone, let it bear me away.

God’s Son is dead,

that was so brave and strong,

And I am craven to behold such death

Swift on the eye,

Pain hard to uproot,

and this so vast

A splendour of ruin.

THAT NOW is here.

(
Ant
. 2)

As Progne shrill upon the weeping air,

‘tis no great sound.

Th

ese strangers lift him home,

with

shuffl

ing feet, and love that keeps them still.

Th

e great weight silent

for no man can say

If sleep but feign

or Death reign instantly.

h e r a k l e s (
in the mask of divine agony
):

Holy Kanea, where they build holy altars,

done yourself proud, you have,

nice return for a sacrifi ce:

messing me up.

I could have done without these advantages

And the spectacle of madness in fl ower,

S opho c l e s
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incurable, oh yes.

Get some one to make a song for it,

Or some chiropractor to cure it.

A dirty pest,

take God a’mighty to cure it and

I’d be surprised to see Him

coming this far . . .

(
to the others
)

Ahj!

Get

away,

let me lie quiet, for the last time

aaah. What you doin’ trying to turn me over,

let me alone. Blast it.

Bloody crime to start it again,

sticks to me.

It’s coming back.

You greeks are the dirtiest,

damn you, if you are greeks at all,

where do you come from?

What I’ve done on sea, and clearing out thickets,

killing wild animals.

And now I’m in torture, no one to fi nish it off

with

fi re, or with a knife,

or do ANYthing useful,

or even let me alone.

If only someone would lop my head off

and get me out of this loathsome existence,

Aaahj.

ol d m a n: Here, you’re his son, and I ain’t strong enough

to

lift him.

Give a hand,

You could do more for him than I can.

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h y l : Right, but he’s passed out from pain.

Inside or out here,

he’s dying on me.

God’s

will.

h e r : Boy, where are you? Hoist me up

and hang on. What rotten luck!

It keeps jumping. Th

is beastly pain,

taken all the fi ght out of me.

I can’t get at it.

Pallas Athene! there goes that ache again.

Oooh boy, have some pity on the father that made you,

pull out something with an edge on it,

and get it in here

(
with gesture; the exact spot
)

(
low cellos, contrabassi, muffl