The Odyssey: A Stage Version Read online

These butchers that dyed the whole Aegean’s basin.

  ODYSSEUS

  And this ring.

  PENELOPE

  That no tinkling ablutions can clean?

  ODYSSEUS

  Thanks.

  PENELOPE

  That are an obscene example to my son?

  TELEMACHUS

  No!

  PENELOPE

  To make this a second Troy! When will men learn?

  ODYSSEUS

  Bring in that kitchen maid!

  (EURYCLEIA leads in MELANTHO.)

  Girl, you’re going to be hanged.

  PENELOPE

  Hanged?

  ODYSSEUS

  For insolence.

  (To MELANTHO)

  Remember our kitchen-talk?

  PENELOPE

  That’s just her nature, poor thing.

  ODYSSEUS

  Then she can’t be changed.

  (EURYCLEIA protects MELANTHO.)

  EURYCLEIA

  She squinge up like a mouse under a floating hawk.

  ODYSSEUS

  Let her go.

  PENELOPE

  No! There’ll be no hanging in this house!

  EURYCLEIA

  Say you sorry, lickle mouse. Beg. Apologize.

  (PENELOPE protects MELANTHO.)

  PENELOPE

  Let the hawk fall! Let him hoist me too in his claws.

  ODYSSEUS

  She’ll hang!

  PENELOPE

  Hook us up to heaven with his justice.

  EURYCLEIA

  Madame, is him!

  PENELOPE

  No. God. A hawk is God’s image.

  ODYSSEUS

  I’m not a god. I’m Odysseus.

  PENELOPE

  An odd Zeus.

  ODYSSEUS

  Let them learn not to be monstrous to those in rags.

  PENELOPE

  Will somebody throw this beggar out of my house?

  EURYCLEIA

  No.

  PENELOPE

  He saw me unstitch the shroud for Laertes.

  TELEMACHUS

  But the bow, Mother!

  PENELOPE

  He learnt from the suitor’s tries.

  TELEMACHUS (To ODYSSEUS)

  And the tears that scoured your face?

  ODYSSEUS

  A false father’s.

  PENELOPE

  He’s cunning with intimacies and quick with tears.

  (ODYSSEUS approaches EUMAEUS.)

  ODYSSEUS

  We planted an oak seed. Tell her what it now says.

  EUMAEUS

  Its leaves insist: ‘Odysseus, Odysseus’.

  PENELOPE

  Leaves lie.

  TELEMACHUS

  He pulled the bow.

  PENELOPE

  Then you helped him kill the suitors.

  EURYMACHUS

  The scar, then?

  PENELOPE

  A story he got from Eumaeus.

  TELEMACHUS

  Are you that heartless? To enact a father’s love?

  PENELOPE

  No. It’s him. Let’s move our bed, Odysseus.

  EURYCLEIA

  Go. You hear what she ask.

  ODYSSEUS

  Like her bed, I cannot move.

  PENELOPE

  Tell me why, please?

  ODYSSEUS

  Our bed is rooted. Its base is an olive tree’s.

  PENELOPE

  Oh God! I’ll wash your hands with these tears, Odysseus.

  (They embrace.)

  ODYSSEUS

  O when this racked body slid down astounding seas …

  PENELOPE

  When I’d kneel down like an olive, rooted in prayer …

  ODYSSEUS

  When the spray blinded me, till I lost faith in tears …

  PENELOPE

  When no sail startled the olive tree, year by year.

  ODYSSEUS

  The sea still shakes in my body, can you hear it?

  PENELOPE

  The sea is quiet and all your trials are done.

  ODYSSEUS

  Keep me embayed in your arms, your harbouring heart.

  PENELOPE

  Take root, my pine, my shade, my patience’s pardon.

  ODYSSEUS

  Has the sea made me this ruin you can’t recognize?

  PENELOPE

  Yes. Trials have hardened your face and hollowed mine.

  ODYSSEUS

  Shall I turn it away?

  (He turns his head.)

  PENELOPE

  No.

  (She turns his face to her.)

  ODYSSEUS

  Drown me in those eyes.

  PENELOPE

  They have shadows now. The sorrows of a woman.

  ODYSSEUS

  Girl …

  PENELOPE

  They tried to strangle love like a fowler, but …

  ODYSSEUS

  I prayed that they wouldn’t, my dove, my peace, my mind.

  PENELOPE

  She fluttered. She played dead, but her warm heart still beat.

  ODYSSEUS

  And that sea beat me with everything it could find.

  EURYCLEIA

  I’ll dip cored sponges in water and soothe your eyes.

  EUMAEUS

  I’ll bring the news to your father in the wild hills.

  PENELOPE

  I’ll oil your brown limbs like the bow, Odysseus.

  TELEMACHUS

  I’ll hear Athena’s joy when a swallow trills.

  (ANTICLEA enters.)

  ANTICLEA

  Wasn’t this the promise I made you, Odysseus,

  Passing their honeycombed caves, Aeaea, Samos, Crete,

  Where the drawn shale hisses like a foam of bees, as

  A breeze polishes the sea with Athena’s feet?

  That in an oak’s crooked shade you would take your ease,

  Quiet as a statue, with a stone bench for your plinth,

  That here in this orchard is where you would end your days,

  With memories as sweet as the honeycomb’s labyrinth?

  As the white sprays of lilac fall on your shoulders,

  As the scythes of mowers are oars circling through grass,

  Now your heart heaves, not from the Cyclops’ boulders

  But that your mother’s prophecy should come to pass?

  (ATHENA enters.)

  ATHENA

  When quick foam laurels the forehead of drowned Ajax,

  When nets of light on the sea snare Agamemnon,

  When the shield of Achilles joins the spears on their racks,

  The harbour of home is what your wanderings mean.

  Isn’t this the surf of blossoms I promised you, Odysseus?

  That peace which, in shafts of light, the gods allow men?

  PENELOPE

  Will you miss the sea?

  ODYSSEUS

  Grottoes where mackerel steer.

  PENELOPE

  Will you?

  ODYSSEUS

  Turtles paddling the shields of their shells.

  PENELOPE

  All benign wonders.

  ODYSSEUS

  Yes.

  PENELOPE

  Were there strange things out there?

  ODYSSEUS

  Monsters, God pity us.

  PENELOPE

  Why?

  ODYSSEUS

  We make them ourselves.

  (Sound of the sea. BILLY BLUE enters.)

  ATHENA (Sings)

  String the bow of this harbour tight with your blind hands,

  Aim the swallow’s arrow from our promontories,

  Pluck the sea’s wires, poet, till the blue islands

  Sing what you heard and saw through your bleached eyes.

  (Music.)

  BILLY BLUE (Sings)

  I sang of that man against whom the sea still rages,

  Who escaped its terrors, that despair could not destr
oy,

  Since that first blind singer, others will sing down the ages

  Of the heart in its harbour, then long years after Troy, after Troy.

  And a house, happy for good, from a swallow’s omen,

  Let the trees clap their hands, and the surf whisper amen.

  For a rock, a rock, a rock, a rock-steady woman

  Let the waves clap their hands and the surf whisper amen.

  For that peace which, in their mercy, the gods allow men.

  (Fade. Sound of surf.)

  ALSO BY DEREK WALCOTT

  POEMS

  Selected Poems

  The Gulf

  Another Life

  Sea Grapes

  The Star-Apple Kingdom

  The Fortunate Traveller

  Midsummer

  Collected Poems: 1948–1984

  The Arkansas Testament

  Omeros

  PLAYS

  Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays

  The Joker of Seville and O Babylon!

  Remembrance and Pantomime

  Three Plays: The Last Carnival;

  Beef, No Chicken; A Branch of the Blue Nile

  Copyright © 1993 by Derek Walcott

  All rights reserved

  Published simultaneously in Canada by HarperCollinsCanadaLtd

  First edition, 1993

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  eISBN 9781466880382

  First eBook edition: August 2014

  CAUTION: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that the play by Derek Walcott in this book is fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States, the British Empire including the Dominion of Canada, and all other countries of the Copyright Union, and is subject to royalty. All rights, including professional, amateur, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio and television broadcasting, and the rights of translation into foreign languages, are strictly reserved. Particular emphasis is laid on the question of readings, permission for which must be obtained in writing from the author’s agent. All inquiries should be addressed to the author’s representative, Howard Rosenstone, Rosenstone/Wender, 3 East 48 Street, New York, New York 10017