POLYPHEMUS AND GALATEA
A TALE OF THE MEDITERRANEAN SEAS
CANTO THE ZEROTH
TO DON LUIS DE GÓNGORA
I deem myself unworthy, Don Luis,
to reproduce in Shakespeare's mother tongue
these rhymes it'd be a challenge to reprise,
long ago by a cultured Thalia sung,
dictated to you; not i'th' rosy morn,
yet in pitch-black winter night, that adorn
a crescent moon, Alioth, and Cassiopeia,
beyond the walls of fair Valencia here.
Yet may the cithar succeed to the horn,
and may everyone listen without scorn
to what I merely boldly paraphrase:
Don Luis and Yours Truly share the praise.
May this be respite from our everyday
and its ennui; pay to this tale attention,
as you pass time and your worries away
with Polyphemus' fierce song, full of tension.
With the Muses may taste once more thus reign:
if yours, Don Luis, can offer so much praise,
I am but second to your turn of phrase.
CANTO THE FIRST
THE CYCLOP
Where foamy waves within the southron seas
the Lily Cape's feet shoe with silver foam,
where either lame Hephaestus has his forge,
or Bastilled Titans 'neath the cliffside groan,
there is a beach of pale volcanic ash,
proof of the vanquished the Cronids did dash,
or of the smiths' hard labour. Here's a cave,
with a rock door, eroded by the wave.
This barren holdfast's paltry garrison
consists of robust pine-trunks, whose thick crowns,
that look like bedheads, owe less light and air
to the profound cavern than to the downs;
this caliginous bedstead is revealed
to be the sooty bosom of dark midnight
by infamous flocks of avians nocturnal,
in solemn flight and with loud squawks infernal:
cormorants, boobies, and shearwaters grey,
who "agua, agua", through the evening bray,
like a thirsted-to-death child castaway.
This formidable yawning chasm here,
this melancholy void, houses the one
who through the cliffs and mountain-range spreads fear:
'tis his barbarian, twilit holdfast and
the pen where he keeps cooped up, for the night,
as many ewes as harsh cliff-pastures feed
within that region; fair, abundant flock,
summoned by whistles, sealed up with a rock.
An eminent mount made mainly of limbs' meat
this bastard of Poseidon's, bold and fierce,
was; scowling from his one forbidding eye,
with a glare that like summer sun did pierce;
his cane the sturdiest centennial pine,
which would to his commands obey, incline,
yet 'twas so slender to his heavy weight
that its top crooked grew due to that freight.
His raven head-hair of dark Lethe's flow
gives a perfect wavy and dark impression,
ruffled by seaside breeze or piercing gale,
it flutters, of unkempt chaos expression;
whiskers, beard, and moustache are surging streams
of rapids, that his sunburned chest do flood
(as on a warrior's breastplate his shed blood),
even though callused fingers, without grace,
in vain, too late, have combed that head and face.
There ne'er was on this isle a fearsome beast,
armed with cruelty, red in claw and tooth,
that the speed 'twas shod with redeemed the least
to save its colourful fur coat, in sooth.
Now knapsack to him is the smilodon
that, with catlike tread, in pinewoods anon
treading the twilight, tracked the horned cattle,
that retreated instead of giving battle.
This knapsack's full to brim, and nigh aborting,
with fruits that Autumn 'trusted to the sward:
apples, wrinkled by time's fingers' consorting,
and pears, gilt into thirst-quenching reward;
the blond, pale grass was cradle to such pears,
performing governesses' dry affairs,
keeping them safe, as 't ripens and prepares.
Add chestnuts, in their burrs mailed, to the list,
sweet dates, and quinces still but slightly green,
and acorns from the honoured oak (ne'er missed),
that as pavillion on those hills was seen...
acorns; of pure first act on this world's stage
the paltry, best food of the Golden Age.
Uniting with bees' wax and hempen rope
one hundred canes into a massive organ,
he made more echoes than you'll ever hope
to hear resound: for, just like J.P. Morgan
or other such Victorian trillionaire,
he had no day job and spare time to spare.
Thus his little harmonica he's made,
confounding woods and tides; merman and -maid
shatter their conch-shell horns, and every oar
or sail on boat hastens off from that shore;
for he was rough and tone-deaf, so infamous
were the ungainly tunes of Polyphemus!
CANTO THE SECOND
THE MERFOLK
The fairest child that Doris ever had,
the loveliest one born in realms of brine,
sweet Galatea, Three Graces in one,
as refreshing as good mistela wine;
two luminous stars, to the left and right,
shone in the bright eyes of her marble face,
if not of rock crystal, modest yet mighty:
swan to Hera, white peacock to Aphrodite.
The Dawning, Eos, sheds crimson rose-petals
upon lilywhite Galatea's skin:
e'en Cupid doubts if she's a frosted poppy
or snow with arterial blood seeped within.
E'en Izu pearls are to her brow not second,
to that fair forehead: Cupid, so it's reckoned,
gets cross and, damning them, for his good cheer,
gives one, mounted in coral, to her ear.
Envied by nymphs and blue-skinned, though not stupid,
by all merfolk adored, as I can tell,
pompous green-haired friend to the sailor Cupid
who, underage, drives his chariot sea-shell
pulled by six dolphins; scaleless-chested Glaucus
is heard, with spent voice, try to weave a spell
to make the beautiful indiferent, for sure,
come aboard his carriage, skirt th' silver shore.
Cerulean brows with tender coral white
has crowned the young mer-stripling Palemon;
heir to a fortune 'neath refracted light
from that hated lighthouse to Castellón.
Though homely, he was not spurned to infamous
such a degree as our old Polyphemus,
from the one who ne'er heard him, scorned his power,
and, as he coursed the foam, trod on each flower.
Flees the fair nymph, and every merman groom
would like to beat her in a swimming race;
no serpent's venom gives her defeat's gloom,
no golden apple weighs down her hasty pace.
Yet... is there venom, tooth, gold ore, or light
that could freeze for an instant that sweet flight
wrought by disdain? Oh, what mistake and woe;
those dolphins follow, skirting shore, a doe!
CANTO THE THIRD
THE HOMELAND
This island, in what it shows and conceals,
is nectar-cellar and orchard of Eden,
crowned with so many grapes and citrus fruits
as northerners have never seen in Sweden.
And in the August sun dazzles the carriage
of threshed grain across the golden tides
of wheat-fields, ever fertile, ne'er forgiven,
to everyone in southern Europe given.
Its snow-white peaks owe as much as the fields,
and the fields as much as the lowland lea,
for all the golden grains the harvest yields,
and thousand flakes of wool and ice there be.
Reapers, threshers, ice-men (there's no escape),
shepherds, and those who press and keg the grape,
be it religion, love, or toasts for wine,
hold Galatea a goddess without shrine.
No altars raised, for that spot on the beach
where by the foaming surf trod her swift feet
is where the herdsfolk leave for her to reach
their surplus wool, and harvesters their wheat.
Fruit-growers generously pour out each
of their whole cornucopia, many a treat;
wicker and willow, with citrus fruits laden,
woven without artifice by honest maiden.
At night, men, maids, and watchdogs fall asleep,
so does the day, reclining in the shade;
and, to the paltry bleating of the sheep,
nocturnal wolf-pack's of the darkness made.
They wet their muzzles fierce, and fleece don't keep
from staining, as wolves feed, their ransom paid;
Please whistle, God of Love, or soon the master
will follow for dessert in this disaster!
The fugitive nymph, where a laurel's crown
holds to the searing rays a parasol,
reclines her snow-white limbs in its shade down,
near a murmuring fountain spring. Thus all
sweet she complains about her loveliness,
sweetly a pair of finches coo above,
and she's lulled by this harmony of love;
her eyelids shut, wakefulness drifts away,
the shade forbids that three suns scorch the day.
CANTO THE FOURTH
THE LOVER
Clad in bright stars, the Sun in Thermidor
was throbbing, blazing, when, dust in his hair,
dust in his throat, perspiring liquid sparks
--or burning droplets--, a young lad came there,
and beholding both lovely lights put out,
in tranquil sleep, he did not lay about,
but gave lips and throat to the crystal stream,
and eyes to crystal sleeper in her dream.
Young Acis was a Cupid's javelin,
born to fair nymph Symaethis, sire unknown;
to the sea honour, glory to the shore,
he looked like made for a crown and a throne.
He worships the fair sleeper, kept in sight,
just like cold steel is drawn to magnetite;
lord of a patch of greens, bereft of money,
yet wealthy in his bee-combs' wax and honey.
https://www.uv.es/ivorra/Gongora/Polifemo/26.htm
...
CANTO THE FIFTH
THE RISE OF LOVE
https://www.uv.es/ivorra/Gongora/Polifemo/38.htm
Adders would rather lurk among tall grass
than in French garden lawns, perfectly trim;
and Acis has such boyish messy hair
just like a grassland, to compensate in him
for th'peach-fuzz on his face: these rebel locks
distill the sweetest venom of young love;
Gala sips this enchanted draught thereof,
and then once more, to quaff the chalice dry.
Acis, less drowsy than his paramour,
through the gun-barrels of his half-shut eyes,
be the nymph altered, flustered, shocked, or tense,
keeps ever-watchful eyes on her visage,
trying to pierce whate'er her thought and sense...
Raise diamond walls around that lily head,
already girt with bronzelike ginger curls;
undermining this keep and ward, Desire,
without a breach of cannon, lights a fire.
...
CANTO THE SIXTH
THE CYCLOP'S ARIA
Breathing hot fire, frothing at the mouth,
like the sun-car's downsetting attelage
in westward shores, the lovesick Uranid
(thus fiercer jealous men burn there, down south),
oppressed and crushed, while choking back his rage,
a black granitic pillar, which him hid,
which, rising o'er that shallow-laden coast,
we might as well call dark lighthouse the most...
or was it an empty pirate watchtower
Polyphemus broke in that evening hour?
The corrupt judges of both coast and range,
prodigious furnace-bellows in his chest,
breathed out into the thousand waxed, tied canes,
upon the by him crowned granite rock's crest;
the nymph this overheard; she'd rather be
a paltry, short-lived, but free-growing flower
than lustful ivy clinging to his tower.
For, if she were one, she'd with love be dead,
or, otherwise said, not alive with dread.
Though, both her arms as tendrils crystalline,
her love implores him, tied into a knot
of fear, that cannon-fires of jealousy
will shatter the young keep, sparing it not.
The caverns and shoreline, in the meantime,
that just had quivered to the rough pipe-organ,
were struck down by a thunder-like bass voice.
I'll sing the Cyclop's song, I have no choice:
"Oh lovely Galatea, softer and fairer,
than e'er carnation drenched in dawning dew;
than snow-white plumage of swans in the Mälar,
azure peacocks in pomp second to you,
as many stars in sapphire evening sky
there are as flecks of light in each your eye...
Oh, these two orbs hold the two brightest stars!
Daughter of Tethys, leave that fair-haired chorus,
settle on terra firma, far from kin;
let the tides see the sun's dusk-gold thesaurus
is reinstated in your hair, eyes, and skin!
Tread on this ash-sand, where they may adore us
as I adore each step of your white feet
upon each iridescent oyster shell,
on which your lovely contact, I can tell,
makes them pearl-pregnant without the least grain
of ash or sand that within them has lain.
Deaf oceanid, whose ears to my pleas
are as deaf as these rocks are to the gale,
https://www.uv.es/ivorra/Gongora/Polifemo/48.htm
CANTO THE SEVENTH
THE DEATH OF ACIS
https://www.uv.es/ivorra/Gongora/Polifemo/59.htm
His dreadful voice, though not his inward pain,
the/is
...
FINIS.
