Laestrygonians

Episode #4:  The Attack of the Laestrygonians

Six whole days we rowed, six nights, nonstop.
On the seventh day we raised the Laestrygonian land,
Telepylus heights where the craggy fort of Lamus rises.   
Where shepherd calls to shepherd as one drives in his flocks
and the other drives his out and he calls back in answer,
where a man who never sleeps could rake in double wages,
one for herding cattle, one for pasturing fleecy sheep,
the nightfall and the sunrise march so close together.

 

We entered a fine harbor there, all walled around
by a great unbroken sweep of sky-scraping cliff
and two steep headlands, fronting each other, close
around the mouth so the passage in is cramped.

Here the rest of my rolling squadron steered,
right into the gaping cove and moored tightly,
prow by prow. Never a swell there, big or small;
a milk-white calm spreads all around the place.
But I alone anchored my black ship outside,
well clear of the harbor's jaws
I tied her fast to a cliff side with a cable.
I scaled its rock face to a lookout on its crest
but glimpsed no trace of the work of man or beast from there;
all I spied was a plume of smoke, drifting off the land.

 

So I sent some crew ahead to learn who lived there—                          
men like us perhaps, who live on bread?
Two good mates I chose and a third to run the news.
They disembarked and set out on a beaten trail
the wagons used for hauling timber down to town
from the mountain heights above . . .
and before the walls they met a girl, drawing water,
Antiphates' strapping daughter—king of the Laestrygonians.

She'd come down to a clear running spring, Artacia,

where the local people came to fill their pails.

My shipmates clustered round her, asking questions:

who was king of the realm? who ruled the natives here?

She waved at once to her father's high-roofed halls.

They entered the sumptuous palace, found his wife inside—

a woman huge as a mountain crag who filled them all with horror.

Straightaway she summoned royal Antiphates from assembly,

her husband, who prepared my crew a barbarous welcome.

Snatching one of my men, he tore him up for dinner—

the other two sprang free and reached the ships.

But the king let loose a howling through the town

that brought tremendous Laestrygonians swarming up      

from every side—hundreds, not like men, like Giants!

Down from the cliffs they flung great rocks a man could hardly hoist

and a ghastly shattering din rose up from all the ships—

men in their death-cries, hulls smashed to splinters—

They speared the crews like fish

and whisked them home to make their grisly meal.

But while they killed them off in the harbor depths

I pulled the sword from beside my hip and hacked away

at the ropes that moored my blue-prowed ship of war

and shouted rapid orders at my shipmates:

'Put your backs in the oars—now row or die!'

In terror of death they ripped the swells—all as one—

and what a joy as we darted out toward open sea,

clear of those beetling cliffs . . . my ship alone.

But the rest went down en masse. Our squadron sank.

From there we sailed on, glad to escape our death
yet sick at heart for the dear companions we had lost.