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- I called back to the Cyclops, stinging taunts:
- ‘So, Cyclops, no weak coward it was whose crew
- you bent to devour there in your vaulted cave —
- you with your brute force! Your filthy crimes
- came down on your own head, you shameless cannibal,
- daring to eat your guests in your own house —
- so Zeus and the other gods have paid you back!’
- That made the rage of the monster boil over.
- Ripping off the peak of a towering crag, he heaved it
- so hard the boulder landed just in front of our dark prow
- and a huge swell reared up as the rock went plunging under —
- a tidal wave from the open sea. The sudden backwash
- drove us landward again, forcing us close inshore
- but grabbing a long pole, I thrust us off and away,
- tossing my head for dear life, signaling crews
- to put their backs in the oars, escape grim death.
- They threw themselves in the labor, rowed on fast
- but once we’d plowed the breakers twice as far,
- again I began to taunt the Cyclops —men around me
- trying to check me, calm me, left and right:
- So headstrong —why? Why rile the beast again?’
- ‘That rock he flung in the sea just now, hurling our ship
- to shore once more —we thought we’d die on the spot!’
- ‘If he’d caught a sound from one of us, just a moan,
- he would have crushed our heads and ship timbers
- with one heave of another flashing, jagged rock!’
- ‘Good god, the brute can throw!’
- The Odyssey, Book 9, Translated by Robert Fagles.
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