Blinding of Cyclops

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Dramatic Interpretation:  The Blinding of the Cyclops

 

Three bowls of strong wine I filled to the top,

and three bowls he drank quickly to the bottom,

the fool, and then, when the wine was swirling round his brain,

I approached my host with a friendly, 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.

And then wine came spurting, flooding up from his gullet

with chunks of human flesh - he had vomited, the blind drunk.

 

Now, at last, I thrust our stake in a bed of embers

to get it red-hot, and then 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 twisted it round and round in the giant's eye

till blood came boiling up around that smoking shaft.

 

Then the broiling eyeball burst!

Its crackling roots blazed and hissed -

just like when a blacksmith plunges glowing metal

into an ice-cold bath, and the metal screeches steam -

so the eye of the Cyclops sizzled round that stake!

 

He loosed a hideous roar, and mad with pain

he bellowed out for help from the neighboring Cyclops.

 

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?

Why do you roar out in the night and rob us of our sleep?

Surely no one's stealing your flocks,

surely no one's trying to kill you!’

 

‘Nobody, friends’ - Polyphemus bellowed back from his cave -

‘Nobody is killing me now!’

 

‘If you're alone’ - his friends boomed back at once,

‘and nobody's trying to overpower you now,

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.