Odyssey 9.532 · Book 9, lines 532–536
If he must come home, let it be ruin
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Polyphemus — ἀλλʼ εἴ οἱ μοῖρʼ ἐστὶ φίλους τʼ ἰδέειν καὶ ἱκέσθαι οἶκον ἐυκτίμενον καὶ ἑὴν ἐς πατρίδα γαῖαν, ὀψὲ κακῶς ἔλθοι, ὀλέσας ἄπο πάντας ἑταίρους, νηὸς ἐπʼ ἀλλοτρίης, εὕροι δʼ ἐν πήματα οἴκῳ. ὣς ἔφατʼ εὐχόμενος, τοῦ δʼ ἔκλυε κυανοχαίτης.
But if it is his lot to see his friends and to reach his well-built house and his own native land, late and in evil plight may he come, having lost utterly all his companions, on another's ship, and may he find woes in his house. So he spoke praying, and the dark-haired one heard him.
Word by word
The setting
The prayer's second half: if fate insists Odysseus reach Ithaca, then let him come late, alone, in another's ship, having lost every companion, to find grief waiting at home. Poseidon hears.
A note on this passage
The Cyclops knows a curse may not override fate, so he builds a fallback into the prayer. If Odysseus is fated to reach Ithaca anyway, let the homecoming be stripped of everything that would make it sweet: let him come late, alone, on a stranger's ship, every companion dead, and find only grief in his own house. Then the poem closes the frame — Poseidon heard.
Every clause of that fallback is the plot of the poem to come. Odysseus does come home late, alone, carried by the Phaeacians on another's ship, his crew all lost, to a house overrun by suitors. The Cyclops, cursing in the dark, describes the Odyssey with uncanny precision — and the last three words, that Poseidon heard, are what turn a blind man's rage into the machinery of the story.
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