Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 368

 

Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "Odyssey," by Homer.

 

Yet I tell you great Odysseus is not dead. He’s still alive, somewhere in this wide world, held captive, out at sea on a wave-washed island, and hard men, savages, somehow hold him back against his will. Wait, I’ll make you a prophecy, one the immortal gods have planted in my mind—it will come true, I think, though I’m hardly a seer or know the flights of birds. He won’t be gone long from the native land he loves, not even if iron shackles bind your father down. He’s plotting a way to journey home at last; he’s never at a loss.

 

His own son gazed at him, wonderstruck, terrified too, turning his eyes away, suddenly—this must be some god—and he let fly with a burst of exclamations: “Friend, you’re a new man—not what I saw before! Your clothes, they’ve changed, even your skin has changed—surely you are some god who rules the vaulting skies! Oh be kind, and we will give you offerings, gifts of hammered gold to warm your heart—spare us, please, I beg you!”

“No, I am not a god,” the long-enduring, great Odysseus returned. “Why confuse me with one who never dies? No, I am your father—the Odysseus you wept for all your days, you bore a world of pain, the cruel abuse of men.”

And with those words Odysseus kissed his son and the tears streamed down his cheeks and wet the ground, though before he’d always reined his emotions back.

But still not convinced that it was his father, Telemachus broke out, wild with disbelief, “No, you’re not Odysseus! Not my father! Just some spirit spellbinding me now—to make me ache with sorrow all the more. Impossible for a mortal to work such marvels, not with his own devices, not unless some god comes down in person, eager to make that mortal young or old—like that! Why, just now you were old, and wrapped in rags, but now, look, you seem like a god who rules the skies up there!"

 

But Odysseus aimed and shot Antinous square in the throat and the point went stabbing clean through the soft neck and out—and off to the side he pitched, the cup dropped from his grasp as the shaft sank home, and the man’s life-blood came spurting out his nostrils—thick red jets—a sudden thrust of his foot—he kicked away the table—food showered across the floor, the bread and meats soaked in a swirl of bloody filth.