Oedipus
Blind Oedipus and His Destiny
Outside the city of Thebes where Heracles was born,
I wander in a grove full of thistles and thorns,
Here no sun can ever be seen,
Through it runs a stream from whose water a dark world erupts and springs,
Its ice-cold water only the blood and the libation brings.
In its vast span of darkness where deep foliage grow,
The steps lead me to my own grave lying dugged in the grove.
Here the trees growing as wood give me no shelter,
At every step I walk I stagger and falter,
As I search my way out of this world in eternal peril,
I wander and travel in search of salvation from life's and death's perennial wheel.
In its thickly wooded path, road divides into three ways:
The first runs across the stream towards the land of Bacchus where the senses exalt life's drama and play,
The second passes over the hill where Sisyphus along the slope of the hill falls and rises,
And strives to topple the stone before destiny brings him down with the power of the gravity that all other powers surprises,
The third winds through a passage that passes by a straggling pool,
Where the blind man wanders like a fool.
Along this path, where I walk, there is a river from where wind blows to my breast,
And with sprays from a colourless stream a feeling of helplessness moistens my darkened chest.
In this grove all steps are grim,
Like a man destined to walk alone in a desolate world with lawless whim.
In the darkness when I hear cries and screams,
I know that some one is being sacrificed like a sheep near the ocean stream.
From there the souls depart,
And the ferryman takes them across Styx to the gate of the underworld where the fearful hound keeps its guard.
While I walk along this hellish path,
I hear the magic words of incantation of the goddess of death calling the ghosts to take new birth,
In a cryptic tone I hear the guiding souls commanding the shadowy ghosts,
To the pool of forgetfulness where they will put new robes and set in journeys towards the world run by laws, chance and material force.
Thus inside a chasm of darkness where Tantalus hangs beside a lake,
I see a quintessential night without a break,
Like an aged grim man as I walk bowing down the body in front of a perpetually menacing fear,
I hear the Furies' and Erinys' cheers,
Confined in a dark tomb of everlasting night,
I listen beside the ocean stream witches' chants and hymns .
The anger of the gods have sent me the perpetual disease, destruction and plague,
I have received this scourge of the destiny for the murder of the father and defiling his bed.
In this monstrous world of procreation where from the old the new generations spring,
I walk as the symbol of the sin,
As abomination of the gods for breaking the sacred commandments and the laws,
That the world's harmony and beauty preserve,
For the mortals the gods have this fearful destiny reserved.
It is a riddle of the Sphinx,
The witch from whose jaws dripped flesh and blood,
Who sat on a rocky seat and devoured the progenies of the mortal birth.
She once had shrieked over my head to proclaim my doom,
However, by answering her riddles I had brought her under the tomb.
With lions' wrath in the body ,
Wriggling serpent's wretchedness in tail,
And eagle-like wings widespread,
This monstrous lion- bird had asked me the riddles of death and birth.
What a fool !
By bringing her destruction to the dust,
I had brought my own calamity and defiled the world with my abominable lusts,
Against the nature's law I had given birth in the womb where I myself had taken my birth.
The Sphinx like destiny that governs the death and the birth is so sinister
That my children became my brothers and sisters.
O what a monstrous complicity of the sin !
That mortals have no power to rescind,
Plague, death, civil war, had driven me from my home,
I have lived a life in despair and suffering after being thrown from the throne.
As a blind man faltering, groping, staggering with a stick in hand,
I remain banished for ever from people and land.
The great evil, that I did not choose,
The destiny's treacherous pyre let loose.
Its method of working seems not to follow any law or chance,
It exists as flames that only mortal sufferings enhance.
In this treachery the cities fall in ruins,
The lamentations renew,
Like an unceasing funeral constant wars and battles sinew.
Disasters creep everywhere,
Slowly they come to kill before one becomes aware.
Like a strange monster risen from water and soil,
While as a serpent it winds and coils
Around the tree creating the life-giving seeds,
It arouses passions, wars and flames.... indeed !
It commands the progenies of Tantalus to the battle field,
And spreads terrors riding the battle hardened steeds.
Its mighty wings cover all,
With its descent the life becomes pale,
The leaves fall in vales and dales,
The looming hills throw shadows across the valleys bringing winter's spell,
Where Bacchus once brought his gift,
The vines bend on the ground and pass away in lifeless sleep,
And sink in the river flowing down in the deep,
The plague and pestilence devour earth's spoil,
In an everlasting night the world sinks where Fates' cauldron boils.
Here in this dark world amidst the cries of the Erinneys,
And the terror of the Furies,
The shivering ghosts come cowering by,
And like a blind spectre I wander and walk by,
Phlegethon's fire mingles with the flood pouring from the eyes,
And the destiny's stream flows as murmuring Stygian reply.
It is a punishment and a chastisement for an inexpiable crime,
An offence for which I remain guilty to time.
Oedipus who has broken the laws,
Must pay for solving the riddle of Sphinx ,
Who holds the order of life and death in its paws,
He must remain guilty to the generations to come,
And must die in banishment
There is no forgiveness for what he has done.
For blind Oedipus there is no other way to live,
But to wander in loneliness where the darkness hiss ,
And the Erinneys lynch the offenders with terrible whips.
In his eyes while the orbs fill the darkness,
He gropes in finding a path in a great nothigness
In seeing where he sees nothing,
In order to find a support where he clutches to everything,
Where in a wild madness the world in a vast nothingness revolves,
The tragedies turn and evolve.
From the darkness as he tries to remove his eyes,
The holes gaze more vacant in search of light.
When he holds his head up with a hope to see something beyond the terrifying underworld where there is no bottom or height,
An emptiness fills his sight,
In the uprooted cavities tears teem as a lake of night,
Torrents of sorrow pour forth carrying Acheron's might.
O darkness ! look at the eyes from where all lights have fled,
Look at the face of Oedipus before he is dead,
O universe ! hear !
Ignite the twelve constellation in the height !
End the procession of the Erinneys and the Furies, and the night’s sacrificial rite,
Cease the perennial plague and show me the light.
I deny no charge,
Though my conscience remains confused at large,
I know not for which crime I am condemned ?
Why oracle had brought my bane ?
As a young man with passion’s blaze,
Who knew not his father and killed the man, who obstructed the path , in anger's seize,
I bore no guilt but only the vigour of the age !
O destiny ! why have you comploted the sin,
For which the wandering of Oedipus must again and again begin ?
O evil ! upon the road where I falter,
In the judgement of God, I know , no one is allowed to be a defaulter,
Onward I move,
The feet stumble and shake,
"Am I going or am I coming? "
I never seem to know,
The one who has gone before,
Brings me here as a blind Oedius searching for an oar.
In this world dark and deep now and then I hear someone speaks:
"O ill-fated Oedipus ! hurry... move... go away ,
Take with you the sickness, disease, sin, pain, far... far... far away...
Go away ... go away fumbling through the heart's trembling night,
And see the light in mind's ethereal height,
Go away...
In search of pure air and sacred light... go away....
I am the messenger and the guide.”
Had I a choice to find the way,
I would have chosen the way the Pegasus or Daedalus had fled.
With swift wings I would have flown upon the blue sea,
Where the sun never rises or recedes,
In the wind shaping the flying masses in the whirling wheels , where the stars sail in the glorious sea floating in the glow of the primordial light,
In the ocean of eternity leaving all lands far out of the sight,
My eyes sail in that cosmic night,
Like a glowing spirit set out in search of land as an aglown boat,
I wish to fly and float.
RIVER STYX