"Come brave Odysseus pick up your oar
and follow me on the journey foretold
when you, dying your first death,
in the grip of Hades to Teiresias spoke
and learned your future and your end.
Leave now proud Ithica and your household,
wander with me away from the shore
in search of those so ignorant of the sea
that they will not recognize your oar."
So spoke the blind bard as he sat in the hall.
And silence fell upon them all -- utter silence --
for these were the words that Odysseus most feared
having gained his long sought homeland.
He knew he would be torn away again,
but had tried to forget the fateful words
once spoken in Hades that sealed his destiny --
an oacular maldiction
that would drive him out to wander the lands
as he once wandered the seas.
"Who are you to call me thus
and speak so boldly of my own fate.
What kind of guest repays his host
with sad tidings such as these.
It feels like only yesterday
that I regained this precious land of mine.
Would you have me leave again so soon
to wander lost within the endless lands?"
Odysseus looked upon his guest with disdain.
He regretted the offerings of food and drink
that he had made to the itinerant scop,
and make it difficult to take quick revenge.
"Clever Odysseus, I am but a minstrel
who wishes to compose an epic poem
which will delight the ear
and perhaps convey some wisdom
to the future generations from out of the absolute past.
When I heard of the prophesy
of your second land locked voyage,
I made my way to your island home
hoping you had not left yet
upon the scattered pathways.
How better to assure the accuracy of the tale,
then if the bard participates in the adventure?"
Odysseus was incensed at the impertinence
of this young bard who refused to see
how ridiculous his suggestion was.
Heroes such as himself did not take useless baggage
on high adventures such as those foretold.
The bards must be content to report the tale
borrowing their words from those fit to serve.
"You are bold for a scop
and if you were not my guest
I would destroy you in spite of your blindness
for the insolent tongue in your head."
So did the glorious Odysseus dismiss
the suggestion that he begin his fated journey.
"Oh, Odysseus, do not shift your anger to me.
I only call you to your destiny.
Be angry with your fate, but not
this poor blind speaker who wanders the earth
seeking only to give brief pleasures
in return for food and drink. I am young and fit
with only one slight handicap
which you will only notice during the day.
At night when the moon is down
my sight is as good as your own.
But during the day when others see
the dark shapes highlighted by the sun
I have a second sight -- seeing the
lights surrounded by darknesses
that those blinded by sight never see."
Odysseus got hold of himself
and saw that this was no ordinary singer.
A chill went through his frame,
foreboding seized his heart,
and inwardly he raged against his fate
that was torn between water and earth.
"Certainly it is not to you
that I owe my terrible destiny
that tears me from my home.
Fate is beyond the reach of the Gods
Who are fated just like we mortals.
Their fate binds while ours destroys
operating on this fragile frame bound to death
while theirs is bound just as firmly to life."
The singer heard the words of wisdom
gained through suffering and pain
and he rejoiced in the sound of humanity blooming.
"Come great Odysseus, set out with me
on your last journey into the interior.
Let me be your guide for I know the lands
as no other man, having traveled far and wide singing
my songs. Let me record the tale
of your last wandering on which you have
little fear of returning home."
Odysseus knew that he was being drawn
into the tale which was yet to be sung.
He could feel himself losing his balance
falling into the blindman's silent eyes
who saw the vision of his return
assured because his death must come from the sea.
But how could he leave his wife and son?
How could he leave the home island
which he had sought so long?
How could he leave his people
who had embraced him again
as their King despite the destruction
of so many brave citizens
at the hands of their own ignorance
and despite the fate of the suitors
whom he had destroyed, many
the sons of the islanders?
It was an unlucky city who had
ignorance torn from it so brutally
but it was left all the more wiser.
Seeing the shadows of so many missing men
play upon the ground behind the weary Odysseus
gave the citizens pain as they looked
at the lone survivor. They railed against fate
but accepted that Odysseus had acted rightly,
even though it had destroyed so many.
Their deaths fed his glory and his glory was theirs
for he was from them, one the gods had singled out.
"I must go on this new journey alone.
I cannot risk the lives of others again
as I once did to my countries grief.
And I cannot escort a blind man
into the depths of an unknown country
where danger for us all would be
multiplied by that handicap.
But, you have reminded me of my own fate
and perhaps that is a sign for me
that I should take up my oar and plant it
at the center of the earth with its wide lands."
Pennelope then spoke breaking her silence:
"My husband, how can you leave me and your son?
What do you have to gain
that you do not already possess?
Though I do not call you to deny your fate
rest with me longer and know your son more.
For we are those who waited long for you
and we have not yet had our fill of your presence.
Banish this bold scop and leave your oar
at its place on your ship. Remember our vows
to each other to help our friends and destroy our foes.
You, my husband, have destroyed many of our friends,
and spent your days engaged with myriad of foes,
to what avail? Let us face our foes together, here,
and build friendships again, here. Let the turning
of the fated world take care of it self for a while longer."
Telemachus then spoke, close on the heels
of his mothers modest speech:
"Oh Mother, Do not attempt to detain my father.
He must go upon this journey,
become lost in the hinterlands,
singing as he travels the forking roads,
wandering with his son at his side,
and teaching his son the secrets of manhood.
I have stayed with you here too long,
waiting for my father's return,
attempting to protect you from the overweening suitors.
this journey is to be my longed for initiation
into the songs only the seasoned men are allowed to sing.
If we do not undertake this journey,
then I will always remain a boy,
who like the suitors were too young
for the overwhelming war at Troy.
Mother, to deny your husband his final journey
is to deny me manhood."
Odysseus was sad, sickened
at the thought of traveling the wide open spaces,
where the prairies reach out to the endless horizon,
and the danger it might bring to him
along with his son. He certainly could not
deny his son the glories of manhood.
No telling what was in store for Telemachus
in his later life when his fate
would catch up with him.
He hoped he would be more
than a name and a brief history
which appeared in an epic
only to fall into the abyss of death.
So many who found
their utter limits in war
suffered this ignoble fate.
Yet, it was better than dying
without even a mention by the poets.
Better to be in the places of honor,
brought there by ones own valor
and by the praise of one's comrades.
Better to get war prizes
due to one's great actions,
to gain dignity in assembly
due to one's unwavering words.
But these are gifts a father cannot give his son.
These are gifts a man can only give himself
by doing deeds that no other can match.
Odysseus could not stand in the way of his son,
prevent his son from giving himself these gifts
that make life worth living.
"Son, fear not. If I go then you shall be my companion.
You have gained in honor by your protection
of your mother despite your weakness.
Athena has guided you as well as myself.
The help of the gods is a great sign
that most men never experience.
So rejoice in the signs of greatness
already seen upon you by others.
And I shall reward you by teaching you
all that I know about manhood.
But ultimately I cannot teach you
because I am the sensory father.
I can only prepare you to meet the father of meaning.
A man cannot teach his own son.
He can only prepare him to be entrusted to another.
We will search together for you second father,
I know he must be somewhere in this earth
under these bright and glorious skys
that shine down on youth.
We will find him together,
and then the real journey will begin."
Pennelope said, "I cannot stand for you
to both leave me alone again.
Why did you bring me into this house,
from my father's house
only to leave me for years at a time.
Other women have their husbands by their side,
why am I fated to care for one always absent.
I cannot bear the burden of your prolonged absences.
I am a woman who has cleaved to my man,
when everyone said you were dead
I knew deep within my self
that you were somewhere between heaven and earth.
Even when I dreamt you were in the arms
of another woman, perhaps more beautiful than myself,
perhaps even an immortal worman,
I still longed for you, because we had become one,
our marriage had branded us deeply within our selves
making us all but inseparable from each other
even though the very seas conspired to keep us apart.
I am not strong enough to go through that again.
If you will take your son you must
also take me, your wife, who loves you,
though you abducted me from my fathers house,
and promised me many children,
and abandoned me before the world.
Think deeply Odysseus
before you leave me again
to my own devices."
"How impossible would you make my journey,"
said Odysseus disheartened,
"I cannot take a woman, a boy, and a blindman.
Next you would have me bear up our twins
and carry them on my sholders, crying as I carried them
across the world like Sisyphus with his stone.
Do not multiply my burdens.
I cannot be responsible for you
on this long journey whose end I do not know.
I have in the past had the help of the gods.
This is why I could return before.
I could not help my companions.
I could not even, in many circumstances,
help my self. I was tossed on the wild seas
of fate, a wanderer, thinking
I would never see my home again.
But I was carried through it all
by the one thought
the image of my glorious return.
But how will I be able to keep going
if you go with me and are destroyed
by some unforeseeable turn of events.
I cannot risk you whom I love,
just because of my tragic fate,
my terrible fate, is to suffer every pain.
Am I not in this like Oedipus?
Must you be like the Sphynx who I must pass
on my way out of this homestead.
Don't ask me "why?,"
these riddles of destiny are too much to bear.
My wife, you must stay
and raise our second lot of children.
These twins are our life.
You are the earth up on which they were cast.
Accept your fate as I accept my own.
Go into the confines of our household
and bar the door till I return.
No one would dare to molest you now
after what I dealt out to the suitors.
Give me something to think about, yearn for,
a dream of returning to you,
as I risk my life with our oldest son.
You may never see us again.
But you will know that we as men went out
into the harsh light and stood our ground
against the wild abandon of fate.
We who sing in the cleft between heaven and earth.
We who listen to the oracles of the gods
and to the echoes of our own mortality."
The blind scop listened to this strange conversation
and he heard what he had heard
so many times before, so many places,
the deep rift between the place of man
and the place of woman,
woven into every fiber of our beings.
This was the estrangement
between the two kinds of a kindness.
He saw it in every princely household he had visited
since his father sent him to learn the way
of the most telling tales, had him taught the odes
and epics that all men desire to hear,
the stories that make them human
and teach them the names of the gods,
the role of the host,
as well as the meaning of glory
and the deeds of the heroes.
Each time he sung the songs
he saw in the faces of the boys a longing
and in the faces of the women a fear.
For every woman heard
the cries of the women and children within the walls
through every line of the great saga.
Every man heard only of the great deeds
of other men who threw down their lives
for a woman that only one man could possess at a time.
Every woman wondered at how men could destroy
not only their own lives but the lives of their families
for a woman they could not actually have and hold.
Every man longed to be like Achilles,
mad with murder in his eyes
lost in cruel action which brought utter defeat to ones foes
and could only be stopped in the end by a god.
This rift between men and women,
sons and daughters, bewildered the scop
who made the men weep
and the women laugh with his songs
None could understand the abyss between them,
not even the proud singer
who repeated the ancient sayings
learned from his teacher by heart.
What is learned by heart
rises up from deep within one's frame.
It reaches out to encompass
all those with ears to hear
the peal of the fated, the fallen ones,
the joy of yearning,
that makes every singer want to invent his own song
pick up the ancient pattern
and explore the differences between
the laughing ones and the crying ones.
"Oh, wondrous ones. Listen to me,
and harken to what I hold for you all.
I am blind yet I see clearly
the difference between men and women.
Men are the ones who seek the light
while women are want to hide within the darkness.
Men are the ones who yearn for the dark
as women yearn for the light.
Each yearns for what the other possesses
and thus their desire for each other is born.
It is the fate for these two kinds of kindness
to be separated from each other.
If not by journeys then by cruel walls
within the household.
Pennelope, don't you know, that it was by being far
from you that your husband became close to you,
perhaps closer than any other man to a woman.
Now you have rolled over into the opposite
and know nearness.
But in nearness there is great distance.
Forgetfulness and Oblivion lurk near at hand.
Would you trade the nearness of distance
for the distance within what is too close.
Too close, too far.
The extremes of Eros appears in our midst.
The sickness called love begiles us,
Like children playing with icicles,
their hands burning, but they can't put it down.
A mixture of pain and glee held together at once -- the sublime!
Like an apple out of reach in the high branches of the tree
Do not allow this monster
that mixes nearness and distance
to enter your home.
Do not court destruction.
Do not wreck the ship of your marriage
upon the rocks of longing, desire,
arousal, persuasion, and action.
The broken wedding ring like that once worn by Helen.
Instead realize the truth of this sickness called love
and stand back from destruction."
The scop held his head high and continued,
"I bring you glad tidings.
This is a journey that is sure to end with a return
like the first journey. Yet unlike the first journey
this one should definitely be short.
Odysseus dive with me
into the ocean of the endless lands.
Odysseus will climb with me toward that
shore of the banking clouds seen yonder
across the straight on the mainland.
You will find your home again soon, but make haste
for time is short and it is as if every moment you resist your fate
the longer your shorter second journey becomes.
Time itself is expanding and your life is contracting.
How long would you have between your return
and certain death from the sea?
Save your old age with your wife
and your twinn sons. Rise up to walk
with this blind man and your eldest son
out into the harsh light beneath
the gaze of the gods who call you
to fulfill your destiny."
Odysseus leaped to his feet, Telemachus followed.
The young bard was suddenly afraid
of what he might had said to offend his host.
"Young man, let us be off,
for I do not want to lose precious time.
There is nothing other than the time
one spends with ones children
They are one day crawling and the next day
they look down on their father
saying `Father, how small you have become.
What happened to your youth?'
So I want to know my twin sons
in their youth before they see me die
engulfed by the sea. In truth, I long for that moment.
When I enter the endless ocean I will rejoice.
This is because returning to the shore will be like
the attainment of the balance of the golden mean
between the opposites of earth and sea.
To obtain that perfect balance
is what will make all my sufferings worth while
giving deep meaning to my life of woe
and the sufferengs of my loved ones.
Poseidon cannot kill me upon the land.
He who has hated me will see me triumph.
His hate will expand beyond all other concerns.
He will plot my death with an explosion under the sea.
A high wave shall engulf me as my sons look on.
But that wave is for me a door way
into a different world where land and sea
are no longer in conflict.
When I die the land shall enter into the sea
and the sea into the land.
I will die where the first man stood
between water and clay.
Like him, I will in my death meet my lord."
Odysseus said to the servants: "Where is my oar?
Prepare our horses and our gear!
We leave tomorrow for the interior,
we who have been trapped so long
on the surface of things, dive into the other sea
where the grasses wave us on."
Pennelope wept at these words
and walked slowly toward her quarters.
Telemachus leapt for joy. The bard marveled
at the action he had unleashed
and hoped his guesses of the future
would hold true.
He wondered who the lord
of Odysseus could be,
a mighty lord no doubt?
At the moment that Odysseus leapt to his feet
great clouds began to gather, and a storm
appeared low on the horizon.
The wind grew cold and Odysseus shuddered
because he knew the Poseidon had heard his
vow to fulfill his ownmost fate
and then in triumph return.
Copyright 1996 Kent Palmer. All Rights Reserved. Not to be Distributed.
Not to be stored in any electronc form nor published in hard copy without the Authors permission in writing.
Permission is granted to individuals to temporarily store and make one copy for personal study.
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