“ The opposite point seems more a tongue of land
you’d touch with a good bowshot, at the narrow.
A great wild fig, a shaggy mass of leaves,
grows on it, and Charybdis lurks below
to swallow down the dark sea tide. Three times
from dawn to dusk she spews it up
and sucks it down again three times, a whirling
maelstrom; if you come upon her then
the god who makes the earth tremble could not save you.”

(Odyssey, 212; 119-127)