Up to the heavens we’re raised on the spiralling waves, the next moment
Down we sink to the depths of the dead as the waters are sucked back.
Three times cliffs amid hollows of rock roar thunderous echoes;
Three times we see foam wash clear, see stars dripping water.
Meanwhile the wind and the daylight abandon us, leave us exhausted.
Not knowing where we are, we’ve beached on the shores of the
Cyclops.
‘Huge and calm as the harbour itself is, for no breezes enter,
Nearby Etna thunders horrific cascades of destruction.
Sometimes she shoots dark clouds up high, enshrouding the heavens,
Billows out eddying pitch-black smoke, ash blazing and white hot,
Catapults fiery globes, great flames which lick at the gleaming
Stars. And she’ll sometimes hurl forth crags, she will tear out and vomit
Her own mountainous guts, she’ll boil into air, from her deepest
Pits, rocks liquefied, rounded, with painful groans, into lava.
‘Rumour contends that beneath her mass, Enceladus’ body*
Lies trapped, charred by a thunderbolt. Over him, hugeness on hugeness,
Etna was placed, and she bellows out flame where her furnaces rupture.
Each time he tires and turns on his side, Trinacria’s whole mass
Shudders and roars, and envelops the sky in a mantle of dark smoke.
‘During that night we endured, under forestland cover, appalling
Horrors. And, further, we just couldn’t see what was causing the noises.
No star’s gleam, no luminous vault with its bright constellations
Offered us light. There were overcast skies, fog-shrouded, entombing
Moon in a dungeon of cloud; it was night without time, utter darkness.
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