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Ulysses 

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—You, Cochrane, what city sent for him? 

—Tarentum, sir. 

—Very good. Well? 

—There was a battle, sir. 

—Very good. Where? 

The boy’s blank face asked the blank window. 

Fabled by the daughters of memory. And yet it was in 

some way if not as memory fabled it. A phrase, then, of 

impatience, thud of Blake’s wings of excess. I hear the 

ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry, and 

time one livid final flame. What’s left us then? 

—I forget the place, sir. 279 B. C. 

—Asculum, Stephen said, glancing at the name and 

date in the gorescarred book. 

—Yes, sir. And he said: Another victory like that and we 

are done for. 

That phrase the world had remembered. A dull ease of 

the mind. From a hill above a corpsestrewn plain a general 

speaking to his officers, leaned upon his spear. Any general 

to any officers. They lend ear. 

—You, Armstrong, Stephen said. What was the end of 

Pyrrhus? 

—End of Pyrrhus, sir? 

—I know, sir. Ask me, sir, Comyn said. 

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—Wait. You, Armstrong. Do you know anything 

about Pyrrhus? 

A bag of figrolls lay snugly in Armstrong’s satchel. He 

curled them between his palms at whiles and swallowed 

them softly. Crumbs adhered to the tissue of his lips. A 

sweetened boy’s breath. Welloff people, proud that their 

eldest son was in the navy. Vico road, Dalkey. 

—Pyrrhus, sir? Pyrrhus, a pier. 

All laughed. Mirthless high malicious laughter. 

Armstrong looked round at his classmates, silly glee in 

profile. In a moment they will laugh more loudly, aware 

of my lack of rule and of the fees their papas pay. 

—Tell me now, Stephen said, poking the boy’s 

shoulder with the book, what is a pier. 

—A pier, sir, Armstrong said. A thing out in the water. 

A kind of a bridge. Kingstown pier, sir. 

Some laughed again: mirthless but with meaning. Two 

in the back bench whispered. Yes. They knew: had never 

learned nor ever been innocent. All. With envy he 

watched their faces: Edith, Ethel, Gerty, Lily. Their likes: 

their breaths, too, sweetened with tea and jam, their 

bracelets tittering in the struggle. 

—Kingstown pier, Stephen said. Yes, a disappointed 

bridge. 

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The words troubled their gaze. 

—How, sir? Comyn asked. A bridge is across a river. 

For Haines’s chapbook. No-one here to hear. Tonight 

deftly amid wild drink and talk, to pierce the polished mail 

of his mind. What then? A jester at the court of his master, 

indulged and disesteemed, winning a clement master’s 

praise. Why had they chosen all that part? Not wholly for 

the smooth caress. For them too history was a tale like any 

other too often heard, their land a pawnshop. 

Had Pyrrhus not fallen by a beldam’s hand in Argos or 

Julius Caesar not been knifed to death. They are not to be 

thought away. Time has branded them and fettered they 

are lodged in the room of the infinite possibilities they 

have ousted. But can those have been possible seeing that 

they never were? Or was that only possible which came to 

pass? Weave, weaver of the wind. 

—Tell us a story, sir. 

—O, do, sir. A ghoststory. 

—Where do you begin in this? Stephen asked, opening 

another book. 

--Weep no more, Comyn said. 

—Go on then, Talbot. 

—And the story, sir? 

—After, Stephen said. Go on, Talbot. 

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A swarthy boy opened a book and propped it nimbly 

under the breastwork of his satchel. He recited jerks of 

verse with odd glances at the text: 

—Weep no more, woful shepherds, weep no 

more 

 For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead, 

 Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor ... 

It must be a movement then, an actuality of the 

possible as possible. Aristotle’s phrase formed itself within 

the gabbled verses and floated out into the studious silence 

of the library of Saint Genevieve where he had read, 

sheltered from the sin of Paris, night by night. By his 

elbow a delicate Siamese conned a handbook of strategy. 

Fed and feeding brains about me: under glowlamps, 

impaled, with faintly beating feelers: and in my mind’s 

darkness a sloth of the underworld, reluctant, shy of 

brightness, shifting her dragon scaly folds. Thought is the 

thought of thought. Tranquil brightness. The soul is in a 

manner all that is: the soul is the form of forms. 

Tranquility sudden, vast, candescent: form of forms. 

Talbot repeated: 

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—Through the dear might of Him that walked 

the waves, 

 Through the dear might ... 

—Turn over, Stephen said quietly. I don’t see 

anything. 

—What, sir? Talbot asked simply, bending forward. 

His hand turned the page over. He leaned back and 

went on again, having just remembered. Of him that 

walked the waves. Here also over these craven hearts his 

shadow lies and on the scoffer’s heart and lips and on 

mine. It lies upon their eager faces who offered him a coin 

of the tribute. To Caesar what is Caesar’s, to God what is 

God’s. A long look from dark eyes, a riddling sentence to 

be woven and woven on the church’s looms. Ay. 

Riddle me, riddle me, randy ro. 

My father gave me seeds to sow. 

Talbot slid his closed book into his satchel. 

—Have I heard all? Stephen asked. 

—Yes, sir. Hockey at ten, sir. 

—Half day, sir. Thursday. 

—Who can answer a riddle? Stephen asked. 

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