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People of the Sea: A Novel of The Promised Land.

C
opyright 2013  Jack Dempsey.

All Rights Reserved.

 

 

 

for

the Geremonte & Dempsey families

 

 

Dr. Jack Dempsey

001-781-438-3042      jpd37@hotmail.com

AncientLights.org

 

 

The hope is to unbury:

healing out of the half-known.

If you are in a hurry,

leave this book alone.

 

 

 

COVER:  an ivory plaque from Ugarit, on the coast of Syria, c.1200 BCE

 

 

Author's Note

The Western heritage is far older than its books. Scientific consensus today is that from about 3000 to the 1400s BCE, the tribes, clans and families of Minoan Crete and their surround of Aegean and Mediterranean peoples comprised a web of lively, independent and advancing cultures. Neither primitive nor utopian, they were centered in cycles of nature, in their ancestors and kinship, and in trade across most of their differences. Such was the original long good road of our beginnings, and People of the Sea attempts to speak their adventures and human voices.

Natural disasters, invasions and political change drove many small tribal groups to migrate and mix with their neighbors—from Troy to Gaza, from Cyprus to Sicily, from Libya and Egypt to the Near East. About ten generations after the fall of Crete and Knossos Labyrinth, their Iron Age peers called some of them Sea Peoples.

Egypt and The Old Testament marked these tribes of the islands as brutish seagoing invaders. What do the sciences now say of their Pulesati or Philistines' creation of Palestine in Canaan? Did they "sorely oppress" the inland Hebrew tribes, as The Bible says, to keep the emergent Ysryli (or, Israel) "in their power"?

In People of the Sea, a long-lived man who was once a Minoan priest-chief adventures into the days of Samuel, Saul and David: it explores facts with fiction, and fictions with fact. I think this man's name is at last Dionysos.

Sustaining 17 years after Ariadne's Brother was a journey, in Crete, to the spring at the cave of Mount Ida. There, my host cleansed the ancient stone basin with scouring-pebbles and her hands, and welcomed me to drink. I was obliged by that gift, and by other springs as old and refreshing.

Stoneham, Massachusetts, USA 2013

 


***
  
      

 

The rationalists had their first setback when Sir Arthur Evans uncovered Knossos, with its labyrinthine complexity….The most fantastic part of the tale having thus been linked to fact, it becomes tempting to guess where else a fairy-tale gloss may have disguised human actualities.

Mary Renault,   note to The King Must Die

 

 

Once across, you can, for all I care, blow the bridge sky-high.

James Joyce, in conversation

 

 

 

You have to see how everything turns out, for God gives a glimpse of happiness to many people, and then tears them up by the very roots.

Herodotus, The Histories I.32

 


    

***

 

 

I

Birth & Death


1: Metanoia

2: Pyrrha

3: Night of The Griffin

  
 

II

Initiation
 

4: The Great Green

5: Separation & Trial

6: Trial & Revelation

 
 

III

Marriage

7: Radharani

8: Promised Land

9: Samouel

  

    

IV
Repose

  
10: King Shaoul

11: King Dawid
12: Lilith

  
   

V
Death & Birth

13: Dikte

 

 

 

 

    

 

 

 

PROLOGUE

 

SeaP women & children.jpg
    

OUT OF DJAHI

  

His skin was red-brown copper, the face sun-lined and civilized, old with a young smile. On his head, a crown of curls so raven-black it was almost alarming in a man of years, and dark eyes, island blood. Many harbors liked his boats. They took him for a trader, a planter of vine and olive. Or was that his father?

Each tribe of families, he fabled with a name: Deucalion Sweet Wine, Flood Rider, Otus, Iakos. His first, he'd learned to keep. People welcomed wine and spirits where a land met the waters. So they suffered no trouble to his ships, whose come and go they envied—like wild cranes, going their ways around the killing.

The mothers' eyes had long been closed who saw the island-mountain Thera fall in fire; and after that, Knossos Labyrinth. Not his eyes. Generations after them this man lived—a blessed curse, a cursed blessing—while the tribes of their children, confounded by their ancient dispossessions, wandered into war. Where waters met the land, they cut down every would-be king in sight of The Great Green.

Alone before them now stood The Nile's third Ramses, his armies not those of his fathers. He bled them once on the Djahi killing-grounds. And still the tribes saw his great river's vast green country, good for boats, fat with grain—her seven arms wide, they sang, to wed new husbands from the sea. Bread, home-earth, harbors: their tents had spoken, and voices keened from the shoreline's darkened dunes.

A fire burned in the midst of battle council: the speakers of their twelve tribes, disconsolate, and this man. Somebody, begin! Why not him, in that pilgrim's cloak of his, pouring? What news? The wine they smelled remembered homes where he had poured it out before, to turning tides. Or was that his father? A darkling fellow, but good for the word all sides where he turned up. A memory, a herald.

Ready now to betray them, and their enemies, he spoke with a cup in his outstretched palms.
   

—This be the center

of the circles of the world.

From a hundred camps of exile, here

we dedicate ourselves beyond our names,

sisters and brothers,

untamed equals born of Gi, Ptgyh, Earth Mother.

Drink, and stand before the fire, woman, man,

once in truth before you die:

look your family in the eyes, and say

why, in this fight before us,

your courage will endure your blood upon a blade—

why moon and sun shall see

an end of wandering, people of the sea.

       
***
   

As ever first to rise,

Pelasgoi, and a woman—a Turan, as we say Lady.

Pyx the name,

a daughter of Earth-Gaia's first human beings.

In every one of you, that blood

bears memory of your first mothers and fathers,

 and as your feet know the paths of your grandmothers' orchards

we know

Goddess

brought Herself forth

and gave Being

space and light

in parting waters from the sky.

Her senses

like a crane rising into the morning

rose to the goodness

and in joy She spoke

Her name of great dominion,

Eurynome.

The word

in its vast vibration of Her happiness

became a rhythm

and Her body

always before our eyes

as in the rhythm of my hips

danced a gentle joy

that rose within Her senses

to the knowing of Her own infinitude.

Her spirit moved in love on the face of the waters

and Her dance raised up prodigious wind

behind Her, shimmering, quick-bright, silver,

a thing mysterious, beautiful, a monster

who came awake in love with what He saw.

Hai-ee! Snake, prodigious beast of being

following Her, became

Her Partner in this dancing of the world.

Hai-ee!

Beyond themselves, between the world's pillars, together

the dance love incarnate,

the horned new moon cup and cradle of infant suns,

the swaying of the sea beside the sky.

His wanting Her

is the deep waters girdling the world,

the serpent in the swaying of my hips

and in our gardens, holy communions:

to Her he poured his coiled-up innards out,

and love brought forth The Egg that birthed the world.

Who remembers this world young,

Full Moon the mate of Summer Sun, the first dawn of Gi

when the green mountains sang in flowers, rivers clapped hands

and every star of morning shouted joy?

Pelasgoi. And so with our first eyes

we see the ruin you blood-sick boys have wrought,

kings and kingly sons, greedy walled-up frauds who made us peasants.

Six hundred spears of family come running to this fight,

black as this remembering blood between us.

Tell you why: never once surrendered, not a child of us

to that first fool of you, posted at your crotch:

Snake, prodigious Ophion,

the father of your imbecilic lies.

Who saw the splendor of the world

and told His Mother and Her young,

I made you:

She gave Him Her good heel across the head,

kicked His teeth out, too, to help him think again,

and from those teeth Pelasgians were born.

I grant, it's why we make such troubles!

We are The West, the flight from madness:

daemon of you all, ragged tribes, silent, sullen-proud,

first and thirteenth people of the world.

Flood-riders, stork-folk, children of the cranes, the salt in you,

raisers of gigantic stones still standing in the memories of men.

Gozo, Nuraghi, seed of the Tyrrhenoi, island-peoples, from Thessaly

through the Cyclades and the twelve great isles of Asia,

we taught men's hands the ways of grain

and now we scrape our fingers into mouse-holes for their stores.

Squanderers of seed! Great chiefs, dispossessed by wishes,

taste in smoke and fire what we bore first.

Do not say it, Achaians of the south and north,

Argivi, Ironheads, that your fathers did not take

our grandmothers' groves, their mysteries and children

from the plain of Argos to Mother Kriti's isles, Miletus, Troy.

Never speak again to wipe from memory

the great homes roofed with multicolor tiles, shining back the sea at Lerna:

the first age of the world you turned to slavery and ash.

Your broke-tooth misery is Goddess law come down, and we rejoice.

Hai-ee! Tomorrow, the last of our bloods marry after all.

On Ramses' jaw-hook blade? Or a spread of bottom-land?

See you at the altar.


***
 

O, Earthling woman, freedom to your tongue. But sharpen useful things on Ramses’ doorstep. Another Djahi waits to drink our blood.

Fotya, my name, one chieftain of these ragtag Achaians. Argivi, if you please—Fotya, a son of Melas The Black, ten fathers gone. I make no apology for a father like that, a hero who took everything his life could reach. No man lets another set his limits. That is Achaian way, even in southern precincts on the sea. We are all kings’ sons, even we whose fathers cut their first boats with Cretan axes.

The woman speaks ill of our fathers. It is Mother Ma-Ka we do not remember well, and from the first. In days before we Achaians had a word for The Great Green, the land that birthed us was far north. A land that was an ocean. She, was it Asia? Drove us from a paradise of pastures—turned on us, in a mountain of Her fire and ash. Her daughters’ second place is balm for that, and just.

Woman, we brought good horse south to Pelasgoi country and the sun’s little black-haired ones. But we were men, born to run the house. Your emmer wheat made Argos a place worth making ours, and holding to. Your daughters we gave proud husbands, Godfather King-Horse and His sons; Poseidon Earthshaker, Enyalios of War, Paiawon The Maker. So, masters we became of another paradise; and then there was a world across the sea.

Cretans followed dolphins to their home: no better, sure, than stallions we to ours. Cretans—shaven men, and strutting like the world was bowing at their boots. So what, a thousand years before our country. There was more to envy and to fight in our blood-brothers’ houses, and lions we became on the land’s strong places. War, we said, shakes the best from men’s days. So it was mother’s milk, my grandsire’s tale of taking Crete—a world of gold and women to be had, when the ash of Thera mountain brought her low. For that, look at me! Crackle with a laugh, like your daemon-brothers in our fire. Laugh, my hand is empty!

For that was our beginning, and where our end began. We plundered our teachers. Into The Great Green we pushed, and took where none could stop us. From your cities, islanders, and Cretans; from your cities, Carians; from your people, Shekelesh, and Trojans, home is waste. Laugh, at victory‘s wretched robe! My father’s land was by the great house Pylos, till his wars came home to burn it. Make me a ploughman. Enough of our dead haunt the sunshine.

Earthlings, take us back into the fold, if you can find it. For the woolly beaten brothers here I say, our slashers and our spears are at your sides. There come times to turn with the wind. It is to be sick of ourselves, sick of blood and smoke. Tomorrow bring us one good sleep or another. I have not slept since war made me a man.

 

***

 

Unashamed I tell Tehenu’s words. Some people say sister, brother, only when they are afraid. You, Pelasgians, Pulesati, masters of beasts you call ships, you said it to us from the first. You followed the winds of your birds and flocked south to us; and now we flock together, like your cranes. With Doku, this man, come a thousand Tehenu of Libya. Around us camp people of The Great Green northlands; and I, who saw Pharaoh’s men kill six thousand in a day, never have I stood among so many. Wealth of trade you brought our Olive Land; wives to make us cousins, and ways to bring our men into the world. Look at you now, kin of Minos, Achaians, Cyprians, Danaans!

I am here that my little girl Atana will not starve. Your paths meet ours in the basket of Pharaoh’s bread. You will see we fear nothing of the front line‘s knives: like birds we Libu fall and fill the sky again. No shields before our bodies, with sticking-spears and clubs we go in, naked. We are the hand-to-hand men, sons of The Nine Bows, who fight Kemeti of The Nile to standstill. Pharaoh’s men fight in gangs of four—each to keep the others from running away!—with heavy rods to break your arms and skulls. Last moon, grief: they bled us many friends. Not this one.

Our Lady‘s name is Dripping Rain: Ngame, Neith, Athena, the mother of our cattle, Who taught us homes we love to build down in the Earth. She came forth from Herself and birthed all living: my girl wears the pointed goatskin cap of Her devotion. We remember our sons at oar and sail with Labrys at the prow. We belong to each other, cranes, whose travel and secrets no men see, but they allow it.

Waste your lands must be to bring you here. How, great sisters and brothers? You burned the great trade kingdom Ugarit, and took from Hittite mouths the southern grain, and Khatti fell. Now Pharaoh trembles before you, who broke his great enemy. If we take his good Kemeti country for our farms, will you share the bread better?

What made our people bloodsport? Who took our young for slaves to move their stones? We push back, and Nile calls us animals. In Libu, the weak men steal. Who fetches home a wagonload of hands, and penises cut from battle dead? What gods desire these things, in halls of gold? Is it to comfort them, to tell them we are dead, although we live? Pharaohs. Men afraid to love the bride they so desire.

Our children starve, and smell Nile barley burned to spite us. Last time, by the blood of grandfather Merire, twelve thousand Libu broke at the edge of Memphis. In us at least, he fights fresh. Our Meshwesh cousins, here, made peace—putting spears to Pharaoh’s service. Are you sick now, kinsmen, of the crusts his table throws?

Raids make wives and cousins. But we had no cause to war, till he made his. Neith gave birth to Ra the very sun, and still in his blind eye, Libu fight to be men. Tomorrow, close and open it again! My girl lives hungry in an ox-cart.

 

***

 

Equals, the Qaraqisa say me Neos. Qari my kin, sons and daughters of Car, who is the heart. Tomorrow, cousins, trust your flank to the horns on these helmets with moon and sun between. They come of days like Doku’s, with Mother Kriti on the island seas. Those days our harpers sing; of Leleges, the Twelve Isles and the Cyclades’ sailing-sons of Goddess law. Great Year in the sky. Still here. But before us, never more to win at once. For that we Qari sharpen axes.

The towns Car built along our waters bothered no one. Though Khatti, Pharaoh’s enemy, was hard across our Asian backs for constant tribute. They reached to drag our sons to every war they fought, in lands never theirs. We bought them off instead, and kept our heads down. Wealth is the sea. And still here, like Po-ni-ki-ja, Phoenicians.

Say of Qari, we lived through. When Strong One, Kriti fell, these Argivi and Ironheads got their free Achaian hand; to make us fear where they could not make war. Selah, each one of us tells the like.

The thought of fear that we accepted built us forts, and brought the rule of warriors isle by isle. We gave ourselves to war to keep them out, and we were theirs. Kin who hear me, what was right? Half our families sailed to save their young. In us, their sons, our old lands bleed; and generations-on, the pirate’s reach not far enough behind. What is left, but turn and stand.

My mother Qari to the bone, my father‘s fathers—Well, by your leave, let me sing it, as our house does every year.

 

Whence Norax? Cretan crane, he sailed to Cyprus,

and built with Car’s Miletus wealth of trade.

His daughters wove anew the ancient secrets

before the bearded cutthroats came to raid

   

Cousin Trojans, how many Qari died to help you? Say it, Achaians, our fathers’ axes taught you what your civil ones now confess. And then we were ready to help the thieves of Khatti into the dust. Good neighbors at our backs, they who swore to let us live for half our wealth. Such was the bond they chose to make with us. Them, Pharaohs worry no more.

So we come a thousand skirmishers. Orphans of the lands we broke and burned; of our own madness. It must be here! We bring good hands, that can fight and build, and solid seamen; daughters who can weave and plant and sing.

A man is more than a locust. That is all there is for us to say.

 

***

 

I kiss my mother Earth each dawn and dusk, that no lie pass my lips. I am Nush: eight hundred Meshwesh camped here call me mother. Let Doku say we live on Pharaoh’s crusts: no longer. His work is his rule. Tomorrow, cousins, watch Meshwesh javelins and clubs along our line.

This Libu name is yours for the tribes of us, west of Nile to Atlas’ shoulders. It was not we who changed, because we lived as the land taught us. Goddess made the world, pouring forth salt-blood. Three years and three moons Her nether-upsurge fountained from the deep; and every tiny thing She made, down to the mud, was Her. Neter, that even in the change of death makes life.

Kemeti people knew this. The sun fell and rose in Her arms, between the horns of their ancestors’ mountains. Why, then, did priests of Ra turn up their noses? The lords who sat in Isis’ lap climbed down, and turned their backs on us. Priests raised up stones that taught forgetting Her: their greed made royal right to plunder kin and cousin. Look what floods down-river now, gods Kemeti change with every king. They kiss the toes of statues till their grandsons knock them down, to put up new.

Their lords shot us like rabbits, yes, and robbed us of our days. The Nile’s good common people who remembered, the priests drove out, and wiped their footprints from The Earth. But from them, our mothers learned; contrived to send big Meshwesh sons to man royal forts along the western Nile. It taught us what it is to plough wild ground. This Ramses now thinks the figs of our oases fall for him. Doku’s Libu called us dung-beetles. So. Dung-beetles ride the flood.

No king made fools of Meshwesh. Generations our mothers pent up cattle, learned the olive tree. They fed Malkata palace tables good beef for Amenophis. Grandmothers round a fire sang us old Hatshepsut, mothering peace: her mother was our blood. Can you Tehenu here recall ten years before this Ramses we fight tomorrow, when Meshwesh put another kinsman on their throne? And here before your faces, we confess it: nothing changed. I have kissed The Earth. You proved right: we will always be dogs to them. Game.

Doku, your own lands fail to feed your daughter. It sent your fathers crawling to the feet of Merneptah. He gave you grain. When it stopped, you gave him war. So we were faced with fighting you, our blood, to keep our homes.

The fathers of that war came home to make us wiser. Now we fight alike for Libu’s girls. Let Meshwesh help; and all you build helps us. We are eight hundred clubs and javelins. No need to tell us who our friends are.

 

***

 

Good! Well-said, for a woman. I too have a kinsman here, if not a brother. And he, poor weary Fotya of the Argivi, told enough of gods. I speak of men before this fire.

We northmen—Ironheads, you say—wear an equal’s mock with pride! And we grieve, to hear a man talk of sleep with his beard still brown. We northerners are never so beaten as we look. When we are, you see us no more. What a pyre I will make, that no low thief nor a Hag’s birds pick my bones! A man should fight, or serve the best; otherwise, work, or die.

I am Pagos; son of Bom the holy might of Enyalios, red star, lord of war. Bom the son of Axios River, terror of the Pindus Mountains; and I Bom’s first-born, last of his eight sons, who all died hard. Our tribes are all kings’ sons, peers of the north wind, eyes blue between our locks. I can row across the wind three days to pick a fight; find water by the smell, good horse and woman too. A legion of my bastards carry comforts of my tents. My sword, the best of secret forges in the west, you see twined round the hilt with gold. Try us. Or, if your wits can murder, insults: you might live to drink me dry this cup, my kylix. The golden rim gives wine savor of ambrosia. All won with these arms, town by island, my ten toes to death.

Gold in battle fetches men who strut their own: so every fight I die or strip a prince, and I never wash the gut-blood from my arms. The little brown slaves of Kemeti will scare, before our hacking-swords and heavy spears. We bring no horse or chariot now, but this you need not worry. Our harpers said it every song of those to whom we sailed to conquer: Their days are dust.

Our sires burned the last ports of Minoa. Wanderers we came to the ocean, wandering we love. Our grandfathers bodyguards, no less, to a Pharaoh gone mad looking only at the sun. And still no home we really want. What is home, a farm where you graze, staring at a grave? My father helped Mykenai‘s Agamemnon break the gate of Troy. Killed for pay in Libu’s battle to the west. Understand? Merire fetched us in with forty ships. Not ten came out. So tested there, likewise we will sail, when this storm of yours rains gold.

There is no quarter. And do not stumble in our sight. Curse us for Thapsos, Miletus, Cyprus too, and Ugarit our share. We do not say, gods rape likewise: gods are jokes, and goddesses the more. Thank us, that we tear the world from games that hide the weak. Tomorrow thank our swords that sharpened yours.

Live, devour, shake the world. We come for spoil: it is enough for the men of us. The world’s only edge is our best blade. My name, my name, my name is Pagos, son of Bom—holy might of Enyalios, red star, lord of war.

 

***

 

This place is wild to me: the fire of our speaking feels like home. I am Veda, headwoman honored to speak for Cyprus Pulesati. We see many headbands feathered like our own, with quills of crane. It speaks a bond. Nothing else will stop the jaw-hook swords and axes of our men. Cousins, I am ninth daughter of Pyrrha, old family of Paphos, where Aphrodite rises from the waves. Our children were Her Graces, and they bathed Her, their Old Mother, every spring, and life was young again.

We have fought to fill our bellies day by day. Tomorrow? Where are the seeds of the garden? Cyprus was rich like any crossroads. In our cities gods and peoples met: they did more than meet in Aphrodite’s gardens, the houses of our mothers. Bonds, from blood to business, must go on: we bring more than weapons. Our motherlands are red Phoenicia’s cousins, Byblos, Tyre, Arados: they shipped us Canaan’s grain, these years of none. And now, though you Ironheads itched to take them, they will be there for us through our first hard plantings. If we hold together.

We call them men who sheathed their swords in The Lebanon. Him we call a man who just admitted, Crete was squandered. Your Achaian fathers changed old laws not understood. No more herbs by which women manage birthing; and soon, too many Achaian sons, and war their only bond.

Freedom without kinship? A delicate creature, Achaian way: one late snow, one early frost, and off they marched to raid their brothers to the husk. Their ways were failing when they took down Thapsos, in the west, where Pulesati towns had planted potters, artisans. In kind we burned their pirate-outposts on the coasts. So, so. Their Lion of Mykenai learned enough to build a lion-gate and walls. But not enough to change his dreams.

Then, Agamemnon. Resolute as fire to force his fathers’ folly on the world. He burned it like summer sun, and fell the same. Pagos, when Troy broke your fathers, you came to us refugees in arms, stealing, raising forts to guard your business on our land. From the isles, our sons sacked Pylos among many. Rains died, war, nobody planting; and here we are. Achaia’s Lion builds more wall, as if a wall is what he needs.

My sons and I have hated you; just like our mothers, who gave us your blue eyes. Such is Cyprus, such is Aphrodite, and Asherah the Lady who walks on the sea. Waves roll over us. We rise; and me surrounded now by ironheaded Graces.

You laugh well! In this fire men come out into the world. Hold together! Time will not change a day behind us. The garden is remembering we are in it.

We are Goddess’ fingers, sisters-in-law to the nations. None but She rule what we make of this.

 

***

 

I am not so refined. Tolema, woman of the Shekelesh; for sons whose swords buy power. Shekelesh way before battle is silence, till their death-name harrows through the foe. Friends, my two sons shout it with a thousand men: it panics ponies, stands the hair up on my neck. But them, count upon. Their fathers fought both sides, most Pharaoh wars. Now they fight for more than pay.

The learning of it cost. Too many sons of Sicily made livings out of wars, and that before the rape of Thapsos. They will not let you see them trembling; but I know many with dead limbs uninjured; who cannot speak, or sleep, beat little ones, drink poppy till they die. And so, on eve of battle, I give you my back—and first myself. Before The Dead here among us round this fire, I am ashamed, for the lives we waste.

As Pyx said, I remember; and that is the hope I have. Shall I tell of vine and olive Mother Kriti planted us, when Shekelesh went naked, picking figs? More like, you remember our Kokalos, who cut his way to kingship on that first wealth—Kokalos the Achaian shill. Who led our sons into pirating Mother Kriti’s trade.

When Labyrinth ships and law came hunting Kokalos, he broke their strength by treachery and luck. What Sicily got for taking sides with lions, you may guess. Gracious sister of the gardens of Cyprus: our mothers knew your reasons when you helped us. You sent us ships with potters’ wheels and artisans; and we cut pretty things in ivory for your trades. I stand here shocked to learn we have kin with these Danaans—one of those builders out of Cyprus was Podargos, Aktor’s brother! And a second time, I turn my back, to beg our Dead forgiveness. Why were we not content with wealthy peace?

No mother can make farms or shops shine brighter than gold. In travels with their trades, our sons caught the drunkenness of wealth in cities of the east—fools’ gold, got by war. Swallowed this they did, like a bass some shiny lure. And once the hook was set, was there a war they did not fight, one side, the other? They were not going to learn until life broke them, like kingdoms of the east. And those are dust.

We all fight feuds, and every house its fools. There were Shekelesh never did forgive the Cretans that first war, and left our island. Quiet, Shardana, till your say! Hear me! Ninety years we fought you, our own blood, if just to spite you in the Khatti wars with Pharaoh. Was it ten years after Kadesh that our mothers’ Thapsos burned, and your homes too, Sardinia?

Comes our turn to perish or lay both hands on one wise thing. Djahi, give us back our healthy sons.

 

***

 

Viri, to speak for Danaans encamped below. Our names, let them vanish like dew on the grasses of these dunes. Tomorrow we die with our teeth in the neck of your enemies. See, from this pouch, this feather of a crane. It is nine generations old, and four hundred of us wear the like: men who choose their tribe for reasons, over blood. Weighs nothing. Keeps our hearts alive. Let it go, the breeze takes it into the fire. We never have, we never will let go.

A tribe is the people you belong with: a tribe of heart or spirit, as of birth. Do you see the buskin-boots we wear, our women’s robes, the kohl about our eyes? We do it so that Goddess is the last thing foe-men see. Down with our blades come Snake and Griffin in the markings of our arms. She is our armor. The craftsmen with us make fine metal things, but White One is our shield. We laugh to hear our Achaian cousins’ hulking corselets: is it fear of Mother Night you drag all clank and clatter to the line?

In the first days, Danaans were a small tribe camped among Pelasgians. Marrying in, they learned. Their name meant White One, snake-mother of the rains. But Ironheads were coming south: thunder-gods, and strength of spears to plunder. Like Cretans, we let the winds bear us clear of harm. Set adrift like husbands of Danae with common foes. And Cyprus, with her reasons, made them cranes to the last refugee. Including Aktor, whom we call medicine father.

The world seemed broken-open to those tribes. Aktor’s father sacked a city which had helped them; a black crime against what feathers mean. To answer that, Aktor took arms: he gave up home and learned the sea, to fight the tide of men making choices like his sire’s. It was family and rage that dressed Aktor this way, in honor of The Lady, to spite and terrify. Women joined him, enchanters, Telkines: their young raised three good towns in Rhodes. And yet, the more we fought back, Achaia grew. Who else made Earthlings answer for what was once content to be alive?

Mother Night, come down! No man can know what killing men will make him. Our sins have summoned Her as much as weariness and prayer. Blood tomorrow, wash them from our hearts and so our hands. It is well, for tonight we see the Great Year way go on. Bad blood every side who eat together, work as one. The snakes along our arms bear the chevrons of White One, deeper than blood, closer than skin. We are you, kinsmen. This fierce thing in my fingers is our bond.

Mothers, no fool hurts you and sits back to listen to the lay. The ashes of Achaia say so. White One, weigh our souls against this nothing in my hand!

 

***

 

Worotu. Chieftain of Shardana battle-line. The tales of you tell of sufferings conquered—and so many, weary of life?

Giants built the stone Nuraghi towers of our island. At twenty with my father, I Worotu shipped to feed the flames of Pylos. Not in hate: Achaians taught Shardana fathers war, and helped the rising of our kings. They used the well-paid swords of strangers like ourselves, because we had no qualms for hurting local people in their way, and kept off vengeance. Pylos faltered in the rules of its own game; and our homes, their survivors crippled to the crops.

Selah! Forty years, three hundred swords the kind men envy, and I Worotu wake up across a boat’s plank with my mate; the sky red over us, raid or trade our way to hunting-game, or island water. Shardana children in the hold call every beach home. Djahi, the sea has fish. Be warned, brothers, we have cousins on the enemy line coming at us with the sun. Let them come. Our thirst is not for water anymore.

Our fathers who abandoned Sicily were no shop-folk, clay lives spinning knock-offs of fine cups. War, Shardana’s fathers said, is one hazard of a will to live no limit. Drunk indeed! We choose the hardest honoring of seed-divine in us. Till now, I never said good and Shekelesh in one breath. But Tolema, and Veda too—under these dented plates sewn in my leather, in you I feel long strength. A home that can last.

Chieftains, you face the strongest army in the world. Stick close, Cyprians, Qari sick of war. You had better close your grip around good reasons. Ask our only fighting-peers, of Libu. Win or lose, nothing wears away the stone called Pharaoh.

For an age before Kadesh, Shardana earned The Nile’s gold, fighting sand-farer Sutu on a river of the east, called Jordan. For long-lived Ramses, too, we guarded Great House from his own. Talk, talk—Another Ramses will be master when our dead feed birds. No more gold. We have learned what is stone, what is sand and what is water.

Our mothers’ looms made Libu princes‘ garments. In western reaches of The Green we built trade in amber, and slashing-swords. Farm figs, feed them your tears! We like that Canaan country The Sharon, and mean to plant in the rot of its dead kings. Teach Ramses war, and Canaan’s Dor can berth our shipping south of Byblos.

Three grandfathers before Kadesh, families like your cranes were weaving nests there. Teach him his equals—and our trades grow as wide as The Green. If this is the way, Shardana come: we sleep like earth, on graves of men or in them. Tomorrow, brothers, more than gold.

 

***

 

Wilios, a priest of The Great Year: Wilios, named for Troy-town in your tongue. A Cretan name: my mother and my father, Troy’s last keepers of the dance of space and time. Look at me, old, bent. Why do four hundred javelins and swords send me?

You victors drink and stare and tremble: I talk for sons of warriors too, who wait the dawn beyond speaking. From the memory of defeat, we bring—contempt for victory. Fotya, our Achaian brother lives it. Better life his sons.

The Great Year dance of moon and sun, of light and shadow, is the harmony of circles. If those very powers of life follow laws, what is our excuse? Men who toss their anchors grow confused, and then afraid.

Troy grieved Kriti like a mother; yet, six generations we prospered by her lights. Our last queen’s headdress hung down drops of silver thicker than her hair. Black Sea river-gold. For trim, lapis out of Asia, blue like Mother Sea at night, and every water-cup a little spiraled vessel for an altar. When Achaians smelled wealth, we built our strength; but feud did not fetch lions to the door.

See how we failed. We closed the north to them, and used our straits for our advantage. And so Troy feared resentment, needed walls; certain, I assure you, we could handle what destroyed us. When councils let our kings rule more than a Great Year’s counted moons, our people’s ways broke off from that real world. Was one king, Priam, any better in the end? Our fathers bled ten years to save a wall. I buried that last headdress in it, when the measure of our greed smashed through the gate. We milked the Asian trade and liked the butter. King! An office built to fetch disaster.

Our families slaves, made nothings by a sword: no sweat of labor gave them back their souls. Achaians, we will never forget, nor forgive. But look at us. Tomorrow we all win, or lose. The way is in our hands. It saved Phoenicia from your blades.

There is no choice but laughter—Trojan blades at Achaian sides! Oblige us in the ancient way, then. Remember the abandoned things that made us orphans here. Before our eyes, The Great Year turns in moon and sun, our anchor in this world. Return, return! A web of cousins equal. Fools leave now who lust for more.

 

***

 

Nobody walks away. I see no beaten people here. Maybe, you flea-bit pharaohs, a seed to plant.

Padi; as you see, a gray mother of the Lukka. The Turan of our chieftain, Chimaros Night Flame, who sleeps now, poppy-drunk. Just between us? His life is one whole cloth of nerve and larceny. His name too has a Cretan touch: great ones, does that ring with your pardon-tales? Tell it to a pirate.

Before this fire, truth for truth. You bring us Lukka here to build your numbers. Knives you seem to have to help the poorest isle-folk. Now know why our skills red The Nile again this year. Well, good children of Goddess law, a long nose blocks your eyes. Your sea-law made the Lukka hated, in the midst of your own crimes across The Green. Now you know what it is to do things you hate for the sake of your children.

Lukka laugh at big words, like the pennants men fly on their war-wagons: they flap more wind than the ponies. Our camp sent this bent old lady, I confess it, as a mock. But we too loved our lands along the sea. Cousin Neos, we remember Khatti people as cousins, in times-back when Hatti was their Mother of the Sun. Then, you know the story. Their fathers threw down Goddess and her daughters, put up stone-bearded statues of themselves—and marched on us, for our last sheep and son. We Lukka too learned blades in Khatti’s front lines against Pharaohs. So! Out of that, our elders’ new choice: keep bleeding for Hatussas, starve in hidden places; or, bury regret, and take for ourselves as others take.

Now you understand this intolerable camp of children’s eyes. Yonder! a slow fat ship riding low with grain, and wine, and metals—Great ones, you were nobler in your pain? Chimaros sleeps drunk to numb his dreams. Dress your idols as you like.

The Khatti fought old Pharaoh to a standstill at Kadesh. But the fight wore out their arms, and we turned on them. With relish. That was our mistake, you men have said it! Sweet righteous poison, blood-justice and our very own right to steal—Puh! Brought us where? Homes of flame, our mouths big words, our bodies criminals. Crack the circle! Crack yourself.

Before I sit, mothers and fathers, what will you lay upon the mountain’s bleeding-stone, that your ancestors bring you back to life? In each of us the fool must die. And no offering we make can match what must be won tomorrow.

I know the wrinkle in my boy’s smile when he hurts. The color of my girl’s hair is an oak-leaf in the seventh waning moon. See, then: those with nothing yet can give most dear. To Gi, Panagia, Pytogayah, a little one. My littlest one. She went like sleep. And this night, she climbs into the lap of Sapsu, Mother of the Sun.

Our sisters hide their faces in their palms. They know what is torn from us, in hope of one heard prayer. Tribes they come from, men will weep, and have no tears tomorrow.

Eh? Muttering furze-faced chieftains, show the sunrise your own best offering. What? Go on, then, brother pirates! Cat-call, clang your cups, howl the holy curses! How many children wasted on your altars to yourselves?

 

 

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I

 

A wind of the sea ...

 

Click below to read on into People of the Sea Parts I & II .  .  .

 

I

Birth & Death


1:  Metanoia

2:  Pyrrha

3:  Night of The Griffin

 

II

Initiation


4:  The Great Green

5:  Separation & Trial

6:  Trial & Revelation

 

Your Frank Critical Feedback Is Most Welcome and Appreciated!
    
Write to me at 
jpd37 @ hotmail.com .

 


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