Now it is sunset. The gods turn their backs on the world, to the halls of
splendour return for the feasting, wading the blood-thick clouds in their
leather-thonged sandals, sipping celestial nectar and then retiring, each to a
sweet-scented couch in his private apartment.
The town is asleep. Only we wash the floor, clearing away the debris and dirt
of all those nights of drinking and laughter. Someone has vomited under the
table, red spreads the puddle of wine, undigested, and blends with the blood.
The heavy air in the room is hot and thick with the smoke of torches, sweat
runs down backs, heads ache, dizzily bowed to our dreary task. Hands function all
by themselves, busily sweeping and scouring, dragging the suitors'- our dear
lovers' - butchered remains to the midden out in the courtyard.
Ulysses has come home. We didn't know him - I'd never seen him. Lady
Penelope's happy. She, of course, always had something in prospect. Either her hero
husband's return from distant Ilium or the reliable news of his death and the
choice of one of her numerous suitors, or, with the passage of time, the
creation from Ulysses' memory of a palace of fame undying for her to inhabit.
But how could we maids ever cling to a straw of memory, more and more slender
and only held out to another? No god pauses on our account; barred from all
history, how could we not have had faith in the glorious thrill of an actual
touch when it finally came our way?
Translated by Bernard Adams