Greathearted Odysseus, home at last,

was being bathed now by Eurynomê

and rubbed with golden oil, and clothed again

in a fresh tunic and a cloak. Athena

lent him beauty, head to foot...

He sat then in the same chair by the pillar,

facing his silent wife, and said:

 

“Strange woman,

the immortals of Olympus made you hard,

harder than any. Who else in the world

would keep aloof as you do from her husband  

if he returned to her from years of trouble,

cast on his own land in the twentieth year?

 

Nurse, make up a bed for me to sleep on.

Her heart is iron in her breast.”

 

Penelope

spoke to Odysseus now. She said:

“Strange man,

if man you are . . . This is no pride on my part

nor scorn for you—not even wonder, merely.

I know so well how you—how he—appeared

boarding the ship for Troy. But all the same . . .

 

Make up his bed for him, Eurykleia.  

Place it outside the bedchamber my lord

built with his own hands. Pile the big bed

with fleeces, rugs, and sheets of purest linen.”

 

With this she tried him to the breaking point,

and he turned on her in a flash raging:

“Woman, by heaven you’ve stung me now!

Who dared to move my bed?

No builder had the skill for that—unless

a god came down to turn the trick. No mortal

in his best days could budge it with a crowbar.  

There is our pact and pledge, our secret sign,

built into that bed—my handiwork

and no one else’s!

 

An old trunk of olive

grew like a pillar on the building plot,

and I laid out our bedroom round that tree,

lined up the stone walls, built the walls and roof,

gave it a doorway and smooth-fitting doors.

Then I lopped off the silvery leaves and branches,

hewed and shaped that stump from the roots up

into a bedpost, drilled it, let it serve

as model for the rest. I planed them all,

inlaid them all with silver, gold and ivory,

and stretched a bed between—a pliant web

of oxhide thongs dyed crimson.

 

There’s our sign!

I know no more. Could someone else’s hand

have sawn that trunk and dragged the frame away?”

 

Their secret! as she heard it told, her knees

grew tremulous and weak, her heart failed her.

With eyes brimming tears she ran to him,

throwing her arms around his neck, and kissed him,  

murmuring:

“Do not rage at me, Odysseus!

No one ever matched your caution! Think

what difficulty the gods gave: they denied us

life together in our prime and flowering years,

kept us from crossing into age together.

Forgive me, don’t be angry. I could not

welcome you with love on sight! I armed myself

long ago against the frauds of men,

impostors who might come—and all those many

whose underhanded ways bring evil on!  

Helen of Argos, daughter of Zeus and Leda,

would she have joined the stranger, lain with him,

if she had known her destiny? known the Akhaians

in arms would bring her back to her own country?

Surely a goddess moved her to adultery,

her blood unchilled by war and evil coming,

the years, the desolation; ours, too.

But here and now, what sign could be so clear

as this of our own bed?

No other man has ever laid eyes on it—  

only my own slave, Aktoris, that my father

sent with me as a gift—she kept our door.

You make my stiff heart know that I am yours.”

 

Now from his breast into his eyes the ache

of longing mounted, and he wept at last,

his dear wife, clear and faithful, in his arms,

longed for

 

as the sunwarmed earth is longed for by a swimmer

spent in rough water where his ship went down

under Poseidon’s blows, gale winds and tons of sea.

Few men can keep alive through a big surf

to crawl, clotted with brine, on kindly beaches

in joy, in joy, knowing the abyss behind:

and so she too rejoiced, her gaze upon her husband,

her white arms round him pressed as though forever.