Sarah Wardle

Richard Deakin

Featured Poet in August Issue 2008

The Vortex of the Will  

A play by Richard Deakin

Scene 5.

(Darkness and silence.  A flickering watery light appears that reddens to DAWN.  MIST blows across stage.  ODYSSEUS stands, half-obscured, resumes his story painfully.  HOMER and KIRKE are gone, the cage in darkness.) 

ODYSSEUS:  Dawn she comes early, with fingers of rose.

So then we went down to the dark ship,

shoved the hollow ship into the brightening water and sprang all aboard her, tackle and trim and sheep for sacrifice;  my comrades hoisted sail and then we sat back and let the North Wind take her.

The bright sail grew big-bellied in the wind                        (SEA sounds begin)

and all day long she hissed across Ocean Stream

till we came to a coast of mist, Kimmerian lands,                (red light turns to GREY)

poor men who never see the blinding sun, or sharp white star, or any heavens at all.

Passing by these, but still in mist, we saw....

The Island!                                                                                  (eerie FOGHORN sounds)

                      As soon as we saw the beach we hauled ashore

and walked along beside the Ocean Stream                       (ROAR of rivers begin)

till we came to the place that Kirke spoke of.                         (HEAD lit up by SPOT)

First made we the libation she instructed, then the trench.

I made the men hold the sheep, and I

slit up their throats, and held their streaming throats           (he mimes this)

over the trench, till it was filled with blood.                             (ROAR and SPOT fade)

(he comes forward, sits on something in the mist)

There sat I on a stool, with my sharp sword                        (holds up sheathed sword)

before this bloody feeding-trough for the dead (SPIRITS begin to crawl through the mist toward the trench) as hungry spirits gibbered towards me, gathered round squeaking like bats.  I set my soul

and drew my long bright sword     (he does so)

and sat me down before the fosse

and none would I let pass    (as he holds the crawling SPIRITS back at swordpoint)

before that blinded and all-seeing man, Teiresias.

(shuddering with fear:)

The souls swarmed around me, craving blood....

whispered to me.  Among them warriors, weary of wounds, besmeared with blood and bearing still-bloody arms....

whispered. 

(as SPIRITS whisper and gibber)

In front of them, to my amaze,

first comes my comrade Elpenor his soul, Elpenor, a man not strong in war or wine but a good fellow for all that, Elpenor - who slept the night on Kirke’s roof and missed us in the morning as we sailed.

(as dead throng and gibber around him, he speaks to one) Elpenor, how did you thus outpace us to this Island, and we swift sailors on the hissing sea?

Or have you learned to walk on water nowadays?

ELPENOR: (leans forward to hiss in Odysseus’s ear) Odysseus, Ezra, cunning one it was bad luck and too much wine.

With vomit in my throat I crawled me out apart from still hard-drinking friends to spend the night on Kirke’s cool roof:  but in the morning when I woke and saw you launch the ship without me I hurried down to you, and in my haste forgot the ladder to the ground and tumbled off the roof, a perfect dive

- to hit head-first.   (He shudders, covers his face)

The shock shattered the spine’s nerve,

wrenched askew the neckbone

- the soul sank to Hades’ house.

When you get back to Kirke’s island

I beg you there to burn my bones

till they are purged of flesh, snowy and white and heap my barrow high.

I have no monument, had yet to make me a name, but stick my good oar upright in the earth

- the one I used to pull beside my friends.    (he weeps)

ODYSSEUS:  (weeping with him)   Old friend, it’s gladly done.

(turns to audience, resumes his narrator’s tone) So we sat there on either side of the trench, my friend and I, eying each other sadly, unable to touch, and weeping bitterly across the ditch of death.

(he turns to fend off other SPIRITS who are getting too close to the trench) But I held all the others off and none would I let drink the blood (a FEMALE SPIRIT begs him with imploring arms) not even my own mother Anticleia would I let drink before the Lord Teiresias the seer had had his bloody fill.

(one of the spirits is allowed to drink in the trough.  It RISES out of the mist into the light, taking on detail and substance) And he, his lips soon wet and tongue made strong with the blood, he spoke.

TEIRESIAS:  (dribbling blood)   Man of many miseries,

ill-starred man, what are you doing here among the gibbering dead before your time?

Keep aside the bright sword while I drink and for your gift of blood I’ll make you prophecies. 

ODYSSEUS:  (as Teiresias stoops to drink)  He sipped the red beverage again.

I sheathed my silver-studded blade  (he does so) and let the holy man drink of the dark blood till he, strong with the blood, bespoke me. 

TEIRESIAS:  (he rises, his voice booming  eerily loud over the SPEAKER) Much-travelled man, magnificent Odysseus, it’s home you want, and sure, home can be sweet.

Except - there is a god to satisfy -

I mean Poseidon, Shaker of Earth,

stirrer of seas, who prints all the papers, watches all, aye, sees us as we speak

- would kill you if he could.  And why?

only because you blinded his brutal son

the savage, ignorant Kyklope, that one-eyed terrible man.... 

ODYSSEUS:  The Cyclops?   

TEIRESIAS:  Don’t tell me you deny

that with a red-hot stake you sizzled out that huge and bad man’s single eye. 

ODYSSEUS:  That bastard!  He ate six of my men.

Besides, I couldn’t stand the way he had of only looking on one side of things. 

TEIRESIAS:  Be that as it may, if you and your mates have still a single chance of getting home

- because of stronger will in yet another god, perhaps - then must you heed my words:

(sternly:)  Odysseus, touch you not

nor ever let your men to kill

the sacred oxen of the sun.

Now then:  you may be starving at the time but if you touch, or allow your men to touch but a hair or a hoof of the Sun King’s cattle you’ll never reach your homes - or IF you do ‘cos Father Zeus or Fate will have it so then will you come home late, and only you alone, and in ill-case, much-battered by the sea.  I am the seer Teiresias and this is my true prophecy.

ODYSSEUS:  Odysseus thanks you for it. 

TEIRESIAS:  After you kill the suitors sniffing round the skirts of your lovely lady wife Penelope

- the mistress of Art and Craft -

then you must still divert the great Earthshaker’s rage for your blinding his son. 

ODYSSEUS:  How can I do this? 

TEIRESIAS:  You must seek out a land where men know not the sea, nor what a black ship is, men unfamiliar with the hollow ships.

Carry your oar with you, and when you see a man who takes your good oar for a winnowing fan and asks what corn you plan to winnow out of season

- then you’ll have found the place.

There plant your oar, and make you sacrifice, blood of bulls of the best, and honeyed wine pour out for the Lord Poseidon 

ODYSSEUS:   And then? 

TEIRESIAS:  After you do this you can go home, and in a ripe old age - your family about you - death will come to you far from the swing of the sea, peacefully, far from the force of the flood.

You will leave your people prosperous

and best of all they will remember.... (his VOICE begins to weaken) a mythic man who made his mark.... (he staggers) ....and this is my true prophecy....

(leans forward to whisper his final words into Odysseus’s ear) ....or will be so....after much wandering....

(he crumples to the ground, falls back among the writhing dead spirits) 

ODYSSEUS:  (turns to audience, narrating) So spoke the blinded seer, Teiresias:

he said Odysseus would come home at last. 

(BLACKOUT.)

Copyrights remain with the Authros (in this instance with Richard Deakin)

Go Up