Chapter Text
Book 25 — The Joys of Home
The skirmish ended. Now, sweet peace endured.
You ordered it, all-seeing Athena,
and Ithacans in unison obeyed.
Each outraged suitor’s kin, in vengeance armed,
laid down his weapons, shield, and enmities,
as did Odysseus and his loyal men.
In full accord with Pallas Athena
the King championed the peace without rancor.
In peacetime rituals can be observed.
Odysseus decreed full funeral rites
for old Eupeithes, killed when spears flew.
This was a man who took part in revolt
but, when he fell, he died a warrior,
the last to fall due to the war at Troy.
His body, shredded by the ruthless bronze,
received the honors for which heroes vie.
The blood-stained deadweight corpse, stiff, pale, and gray,
was bathed in scalding water mixed with tears,
then oiled and shrouded, ready for the flames.
While keening women washed an empty husk,
thick trees were felled. A massive funeral pyre
was built to honor all the island’s dead
who sailed for war. The fate of every man
that sailed was sealed, known. “Now we know. No more
return.”
All Ithacans shared remembrance.
The muster, way back when, had touched them all.
Twelve-hundred men, from all the island’s clans,
sailed off to war. Only one man returned.
Altho this was the bitterest of truths,
that every man mustered for Troy was lost,
they long ago had all come to expect it.
The loss of hope, the saddest loss of all,
was what they mourned, more than they mourned the dead.
They gathered solemnly down by the shore
where recently Odysseus, alone,
back home unknown, awoke as from a dream.
The first communal mourning since the war,
it brought together every islander.
The stand-in hero nestled on the pyre
while every name of every soldier lost
was called aloud by families and friends
who stood to honor husbands, brothers, sons.
So many names called out in a short time,
some times all in a bunch, same as they died,
their names all heaped up like their bodies were
when they were piled on funeral pyres on plains
that sloped away from windswept Ilion.
Odysseus remembered every man,
and every name called out reminded him
how badly he had failed them when they sailed
after Troy fell. By right they should be home.
That complex man sloughed off rough nurtured wrath
like snakes that shed abandon outgrown skins.
Most Ithacans felt thicker with their King,
thinking he wept like them for their lost kin.
“Strong men also cry. Strong men also cry.”
Prayers said, wine mixed, drops poured, rams sacrificed.
While thirst and appetite were satisfied,
the sparks kept flying up. Paeans were sung
to heroes, gods, and insatiable Time.
The fading embers flickered red white black.
As evening fell and ashes floated off,
pacified Ithacans turned to their homes.
So did their King and his unburdened court.
Nine peaceful nights and days of calm began.
Joy-filled Penelope, devoted wife,
rhapsodic loom unstrung, her faith in love
and life’s sweet tapestry fully rewarded,
unwound beside her husband all night long,
lingered entangled in their rooted bed
‘neath slanted shafts of golden rays of dawn
while he drowsed beside her. Mostly they talked,
building afresh a nest to fit them now,
binding their hearts again in conversation.
They wept from pains jointly endured while parted,
or moaned out loud together in the dark
engulfed in flames of pleasure from a spark,
and slept at depths kept arms length twenty years.
Telemachus, first born, held himself first
an Ithacan, then Prince, a status earned.
He pulled no rank or royal privilege.
He worked as hard as three, eyes open wide,
taller and leaner and swifter afoot
than father kings before. Not stronger yet
as recent competitions had revealed,
but sharp as blades in ways that he was raised.
He’d learned to flex the sinews of the state
and manage the estate. He deployed slaves
wherever current needs required them most,
made fair use of retainers skilled in crafts,
improved the yield in crops by sowing seeds
covered with straw before the winter rains,
bountiful crops that fattened chicks, calves, piglets,
harvested vineyards, cut and stored the wine,
and kept ships in the harbor moving thru.
These were the skills the bright hard working son
raised fatherless in sunny Ithaca
had studied, learned, and mastered on his own.
Telemachus had thrived without a king
until the plague of suitors elbowed in.
The patriarch, the widower Laërtes,
shrugged off his years of gloom. He chuckled. Hummed.
Pride in his line dazzled his clouded sight.
He beamed as bright as any sun dog shines,
so pleased at last to bask in autumn’s glow.
He sank new roots. His garden sprang to life.
One night he called a woman to his bed,
something he’d not yet done as widower.
Fumbly she asked, “So many springs untapped,
can trees as old as you and me still sap?”
Relief to tell, when tapped, she seeped, he surged.
She came to him from then on night and day.
Nine days of quiet, and nine restful nights.
Engaged in routine daily household doings,
the joys of home felt fresh and new again.
They sat in shady arbors. Shared their meals.
Praised the cool evenings. Sighed with gentle breezes.
Not since he and his men pulled oars for Troy
with spirits high, so many summers gone,
could long-suffering Odysseus recall
a time like this, long days of empty hands,
wandering at long last come to an end,
evenings in comfort, kicking back, no plans.
An idle king, an island absent strife,
attended by her women and his wife,
he watched the sun go down and almost smiled.
At ease, at home, that complicated man,
torn between comfort and adventure’s itch,
retold the tales of his travails since Troy,
as well as stories from the Trojan shore.
At home, relaxed, with time to recollect
and bless Mnemosyne with every telling,
embellishing the cold and sterile facts
by blending in fertile imaginings,
he mixed in anecdotes the bards had skipped,
small hidden things that happened day to day
that helped soldiers and captains bear the siege,
like when they sailed to Egypt with the wind
planning to trade fine long-aged island wine
sealed tight in amphorae for needed grains,
grains the Egyptians brewed in their new way.
Thirsty Achaeans soon discovered beer
offered adventure to fermented minds.
Wheat-run recruiting after that first trade
suffered only from surplus volunteers.
Nine rosy dawns full-stretched in yawning peace
in quiet welcome itch-scratched dawdling passed.
That tenth bright peace-filled morn Laërtes, whistling,
met long-awaited lonely death in stride.
Tending to cuttings sprouting in the shade,
safeguarding cabbages from greedy bugs,
grafting young shoots, he felt an urgent twinge,
brief agony, and crumpled to the dirt.
His ghost moved on, his body stayed behind.
Eurycleia, meal-bringer, found him dead.
Alone, she kneeled, hands on his side, and wept.
She brushed some dirt off of his quiet face,
swayed back and forth above him on her knees,
then dried her tears, and went to tell his son.
Sad task that grief-filled son must undertake.
First thing, Odysseus tasked a messenger
to Samos where his younger sister lived
decades unseen, beloved Ctimene,
wife to that broken man, Eurylochus,
to say her husband never would come home,
that good Laërtes walked among the dead,
and to retie the knots that bound their isles.
Next thing he laid the body out to clean
and gave Penelope the honored rite.
While her good women cleansed and salved the flesh
Penelope brought out the shroud, slow-weaved,
woven and picked apart to bridge the time
until her husband should come home again.
And, if he never did, then to delay,
so long as possible, unwanted arms
clasping her like a prize conquerors claim,
no more esteemed than baubles from a fair.
Laërtes, cleaned, wrapped in the virgin shroud,
silent and still, awaited final rites.
Laërtiádes then took time to grieve.
The younger brought out two long-handled axes
from an inner storeroom. Not gifts, not these.
Laërtes carved them years ago from trees
he and his father planted one fine day.
The handles, one arm’s length and sanded smooth,
revealed the compact grain that ran from end
to end, a well-aged tree, and curved just right
to maximize the force when the blade struck.
Each axe head, weighted contra handle length,
flashed with a bit honed to a tapered edge
Laërtiádes whetted on oiled stones,
then strode into the hills to chop down trees
their fathers planted for their final rites.
Odysseus led them to a full-grown grove
he and his father planted one fine day.
Telemachus, dutiful son, came, too.
No groves of trees had these two ever sown.
On hillsides in tall groves their fathers planted
Laërtiádes chopped. Sweat flew like chips.
They felled four trees with alternating strokes,
sweated out grief by out-working the other,
noted acres in need of seedling trees,
and made their peace.
Suddenly, thru the woods,
angling up heavily, sidehill, the messenger
to Samos came up, flint-eyed, panting hard,
his mouth prepared to speak tho silent, still.
Sweat drenched from toil, Odysseus gave grief
to the out of breath messenger. “What’s this?
Did you forget my message and its mark?
Perhaps you’ve sailed to Samos and returned
more swiftly than a god could make the trip.
Out with it then. Did you come here to rest?
Control your breath and call upon your strength.
Enough of silence. Speak. ‘Now’ would be good.”
The messenger, the trustworthy Piraeus,
returned last night from missions for the Prince,
son of her cohort, court-born and court-raised,
inseparable from Telemachus as boys
when they caught grief for all the tricks they pulled,
was thrilled his King and father of his house
would deign to target him with taunts and jibes.
He caught his breath, lifted his eyes, and said
“Praise to the gods on high my King, my Prince.
I have succeeded though I never sailed.
Your message is delivered on our shores.
In short, the Princess Ctimene is here.
She has returned to live in Ithaca.
The gods must have inspired her to sail
exactly when she did, for she arrived
in time to save us from a needless trip.
Her ship from Samos stayed just long enough
to dump her with her daughter and their things
on the dry dock. Those two they left behind
and turned around for Samos without rest,
not waiting to exchange greetings or news.
A stranger in our midst, she spoke to me
the moment she found out I served the King.
She told me who she was, why she was here.
Familiar tones. She sounds like you, my lords,
not quite so deep, her voice is womanly,
but the resemblance, unmistakable.
Another thing to prove her case, my King,
your mother lives on in her daughter’s face.
She told me much, but most importantly
she gave Samos no heir. The new chief’s wife
whispered to cast out Ctimene, her point:
‘No healthy hive has ever had two queens.’
Now your sole sister seeks refuge at home.
That was her message. I delivered yours.
That her husband was dead she had surmised.
She wept to hear her Father was no more.
She tried to speak but struggled with her sorrow.
She joins you and all Ithaca in mourning.”
”My sister here,” Odysseus thought, “here with
a daughter I have never heard about.
Why come home now after so many years?
This daughter, did she force my sister’s hand?
Her husband served ten years with me in Troy.
If she’d delivered during the long siege
I would have heard, and after we left Troy
he wandered with me everywhere but home.
If only all of us had come straight home
after we sacked old Priam’s strong-walled town,
if gods on high could have allowed us that,
so many sorrows could have been escaped.
My sister’s here, alone, and with a daughter.
A girl my sister’s husband did not sire.
Dead men do not sow seeds that bring forth life.
My sister’s home, an outcast refugee.
How did she ever fall to this sad state?
One thing’s for sure, she has a tale to tell.
I’ll give her time to tell her tale in full.”
Odysseus set aside this line of thought.
“You’re right. No need to sail to Samos yet.
Attend my sister as befits a queen,
Piraeus. Arrange help for Ctimene
to move whatever she brought with her up,
men, wagons, horses, whatever she needs.
You saw her situation, make one trip.
Be sure to tell Penelope they’re here
so she can welcome them with open arms,
bright Ctimene, her daughter and her baggage.”
Piraeus ran downhill on his short legs
to carry out Odysseus’s commands
as quickly as a man possibly could.
Laërtiádes watched his crazed descent
and laughed out loud when he outran his legs
and somersaulted kicking at the sky
hair back butt heels hair back butt heels with grunts,
fly-tumbling downhill faster than he ran.
His watchers doubled over, lost their breaths,
and both agreed they’d never laughed so hard,
at least never together, until then.
Upright on level ground, a little wobbly,
Piraeus cried “I’m good!” and sped to court.
Then back to work. They cut and squared the logs
and called their men to move them to the farm.
Laërtes made it known his final days,
‘I want my funeral pyre right where I sleep.’
After the pyre was raised, cornered and squared,
right where Laërtes used to sleep outside,
father and son walked home aching from loss,
from labor, and from wounds that showed no scars.
Each toted home an axe upon a shoulder,
sometimes behind the neck, arms hooked across.
Back home in his courtyard, Odysseus said
“Now that Laërtes’ funeral pyre is built,
his body cleaned and wrapped well in the shroud
his loving daughter wove for him in life,
we’ll sacrifice a bull worthy of kings,
mix wine and pour libations to the gods
to guide his spirit to the land of shades
with all the honor life proved he deserved.”
Laërtes’ daughters by marriage and birth,
faithful Penelope and Ctimene dear,
listened with tear-filled eyes and offered solace.
“Brother,” bright-spirited Ctimene said,
“our father lived life full. Never by halves.
I have arrived too late to hear him laugh,
to see him tend his garden and his vines.
The joy he took in bringing things to life!
No father ever loved his children more,
and Father loved this island like a child.”
“Sister, welcome. We are the ‘old folks’ now,
just like they said we would be, ‘soon enough.’
That ‘soon enough,’ so many years ago,
has come too soon, our parents dead and gone.”
The newly orphaned siblings hugged and wept,
and the entire court walked to the farm
behind Laërtes, shrouded, in the trap,
except foot-sore diminutive old nurse
Eurycleia.
Gathered up at the farm
they sacrificed a bull, sprinkled libations,
said prayers and praised the dead, and ate to live.
After the rituals they lit the pyre.
Laërtes ashes mixed with earth and winds.
They let the pyre burn down. They headed home,
their backs warmed by the amber setting sun.
Walking along the talk was of Laërtes
and of Anticleia, and family life
Odysseus and Ctimene had shared.
The siblings told old tales no one else knew
except those two who drew each other on.
They skewered lovingly their early days
and called to mind with helpful interjections
events neither alone could have recalled,
the way that loving siblings always can.
They gasped for breath retelling family lore
they had not talked about for many years.
Swept up in celebration of a life,
they mourned with laughter, and with king-sized tears.
Their raucous walking wake to silence fell.
“This was the laughingest hour we’ve ever shared.”
“It’s funny how that works, that it came now.”
They quieted. They hummed together softly
in sweet remembrance of Laërtes’ days,
in easy harmonies with shepherd pipes
Eumaeus played until they parted ways.
No one was more pleased than that loyal slave
that Ctimene had come back home again.
Long shadows stretched before them on their path,
their sandal-footed steps the only sound.
They crunched along in silent fellowship.
Near home a child no taller than a fern
bumped past Odysseus, clambered on Ctimene
and bawled in fierce relentless sobs, in-breath,
babbled a tongue no one could lock upon
except her mother, in whose arms she wailed.
Ctimene smiled. “You weren’t alone, dream girl.
This playful nurse who once held me upright,
and held me upside down sometimes (‘I did’)
took care of you, I’m sure.” She jabbered on,
in her young mind convinced she’d been done wrong
and blamed her mother. How could she forget?
Ctimene absorbed the passing squall
of breathy sobs, of moist cheeks burrowed in,
all the while murmuring “Dream girl, shhh, shh.”
She traded faux-pouts with Penelope
whose women doted on the bonded pair,
adoring.
None of this passed unnoticed.
Odysseus observed it whimsically.
He was surprised her daughter was so young.
He had not raised his own child in his arms.
He’d never calmed the bitter storms of babes.
Eyebrows went up between husband and wife.
He kept his thoughts unsaid. Let it play out.
Piraeus was right. The jabbering girl
reminded everyone of Anticleia,
the way one eyebrow lifted, and her tones.
Dark night had come. Ample bedding was spread
for Ctimene and little girl, overtired
after a sleepless night of rolling seas,
abandonment! and far too many tears.
They snuggled in each others’ full embrace,
mother and child, and welcomed restful sleep.
That night and all next day in quiet passed.
At eve the nurse, now sought out by the child,
took her to play, to bathe, and look for dreams.
Odysseus mixed and poured their father’s wine
while Ctimene told them of her lonesome plight.
“I did not birth an heir to hold off suitors.
Word is that would have been the prudent thing,”
she said, looking right at Penelope
who merely smiled, her dimples prominent.
“When news that Troy had fallen came to Samos
I thought Eurylochus would come home soon.
He never did, and no word ever came.
I feared he might be dead, but here you are.
His family gave up hope. I still held on.
Awhile. Long as I could. I had no choice.
Their claim to his estate exceeded mine.
I never birthed an heir to take his place.
They schemed—most kindly—to marry me off.
Despite my age, my careworn brow, some gray,
despite the crow’s feet nested round my eyes,
a marriage offer came before too long
from one whose goodness I knew of firsthand,
a titled widower alone in life.
His wife had died in childbirth, babe stillborn.
So I remarried. Widows-by-law may.
I lived with my new husband and we tried
like honeymooners to conceive a child,
but every moon that crimson creek came trickling.
We tried concoctions, rituals, potions, charms—
gods keep me from another mandrake soup!—
until, past hope, o, it still makes me laugh,
beneath the vaunted fecund gooseberry bush
my man and I were finally blessed with child.”
Odysseus breathed deep, exhaled too loud.
Good natured brash virtuous Ctimene
couldn’t help but hear him. No talk of that.
She understood her brother’s deep relief.
She bunched her tummy playfully, both hands,
one eyebrow raised, smile mischievous as Pan.
“My belly grew like melons on the vine.
Such happy days! Life seemed so easy then.
The gods of spring and summer lifted us.
We were so fortunate. But in the fall
I lost him to an awful accident
just when our babe was due—
never misunderestimate the sea:
I watched it sweep him from a fishing rock
where he and lifelong friends troubled their lines;
besieged by waves, he slipped, he lost his grip,
and he alone among his friends was drowned,
dragged by the waves to some jagged far hell,
left me a two-time winner, widow with child
—but, thank the gods,
his baby girl was born when the rains came.
It breaks my heart to think all she will know
of her good father are my memories.”
Tears welled up in her eyes, rolled down her cheeks.
Penny wept with her. “May his memory
be for a blessing,” she said, and they hugged.
Fierce bubbly lively Ctimene continued
after her brother filled her cup again
and then, still standing there, filled it again.
“The harsh relentless buzz of insecurity
that droned out from the chief’s newly crowned bride
was an annoyance that just wouldn’t stop.
Her need to ostracize me made me wary.
I could have stayed in Samos all my days
and never wanted. And not with a man.
My titled widower made me his heir
with all his wealth, and it was quite a bit,
bequeathed to me. I learned during the war
how to live singly. But, I had to choose.
Stay on in Samos, raise my girl alone—
keeping the childish chieftain’s bride at bay—
or bring my girl back home. I took that chance.
I’d been away from home longer than you.
News came of your return. I calmed her highness
by seeking passage home to Ithaca
which she arranged almost before I asked.
That was her ship that left us on the shore.”
She shook her head some, looked around, and frowned.
Penelope, Odysseus, their son.
Only her closest family at this fête.
“So here I am, not young, but not alone,
and as my husband’s heir I am not poor.
Bankers have transferred my wealth here for me.
But I don’t want to live in stormy seas.
I want to bring my daughter up at ease.
That little girl is everything to me.
She gives me back more life than I gave her.”
She paused. She looked her brother in the eye.
“If we’re not welcome here tell me right now.”
Unlike his decade missing, out of touch,
his sister’s life was wrapped up in her child.
A little wistful, trapped inside remorse,
Odysseus gave way to hidden wells
of long unspoken sorrow for the years
spent wandering alone, so far from home.
All he could do was nod to his good wife.
Penelope reached out and took his hand,
the other soft across their sister’s wrist.
“This is your home now, dear Ctimene.
Your sweet as honey daughter’s home now, too.”
Brash Ctimene cracked, laid hand upon her hand.
To Pen she mouthed, “Thank you,” and drained her cup,
looked at the fire a while, and dried her tears.
“So tell me, Ody, how my husband died.
Did he see victory and plunder Troy?
Or did he die there in those final hours,
striving for glory under your command?”
Composed at last, Odysseus arose,
poured wine for all, downed his, poured himself more.
“He’s lost at sea, like most who sailed with me
homeward from Troy. The Sun God broke our ship,
great swelling waves that crashed across our bow,
still angry that we killed his precious cows.”
“But you survived, dear brother. Thank the gods.
How did you manage not to drown as well?”
“I rode a sea-tossed log and swam ashore
alone, on Ogygia, where I built a raft
and sailed for home. Attacked by angry storms,
I sailed my raft in safety til he sank it,
the wrathful foaming god of the closed mind,
still angry I outsmarted his dim son.
Gods gave me strength enough to swim to shore
in green Skeria. Land of sailors,
fair to strangers, they pried from me my tale
of trying to get home, fathomed my name,
and, in defiance of Poseidon’s doom
they sailed me home with gifts, not empty-handed.
But of my mariners from Troy, most drowned.
No hope they’ll come home now from Ocean’s floor.”
Odysseus poured more wine. Ctimene sighed.
“I knew he survived Troy, or I’d have heard.
Eurylochus was always good to me.
It’s so damned wrong to wage ten years of war,
survive, and then be lost at sea, alone,
all funeral ceremonials forgotten.
But lay a good man down to rest at sea,
they say all of creation haunts the rites.”
Then Ctimene struck a pose and mocked the bard,
“Time is an ocean in which all men drown.”
Odysseus raised his goblet to the skies.
Spoke from the heart. Only slurred a few words.
“Strong women, you’ve been tried in every way.
Widowed with babies growing in your womb,
afraid you might be widows when you’re not.
Valorous women always will come through,
undefeated and undefeatable.
Here’s to you both.” He drank, as did they all,
and then another round, and then some more.
Swimming in wine they talked deep into night
until the early birds made themselves heard.
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