Intro
Book XI, lines 410-441
"'Cyclops,
You ask me my name, my glorious name,
And I will tell it to you. Remember now,
To give me the gift just as you promised.
Noman is my name. They call me Noman--
My mother, father, and all my friends too.'
He answered me from his pitiless heart:
'Noman I will eat last after his friends.
Friends first, him last. That's my gift to you.'
He listed as he spoke and then fell flat on his back,
His thick neck bent sideways. He was sound asleep,
Belching out wine and bits of human flesh
In his drunken stupor. I swung into action,
Thrusting the stake deep in the embers,
Heating it up, and all the while talking to my men
To keep up their morale. When the olivewood stake
Was about to catch fire, green though it was
And was really glowing, I took it out
And brought it right up to him. My men
Stood around me, and some god inspired us.
My men lifted up the olivewood stake
And drove the sharp point right into his eye,
While I, putting my weight behind it, spun it around
The way a man bores a ship's beam with a drill,
Leaning down on it while the other men beneath him
Keep it spinning and spinning with a leather strap.
That's how we twirled the fiery-pointed stake
In the Cyclops' eye. The blood formed a whirlpool
Around its searing tip. His lids and brow
Were all singed by the heat from the burning eyeball
And it's roots crackled in the fire and hissed
Like an axe-head or adze a smith dips into water."
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