Down at the Docks

In Greek legend, Galatea is a sea-nymph who loves a mortal boy named Acis. The monster Cyclops named Polyphemus loves Galatea and kills the boy. Galatea runs away and rejoins the sea nymphs.

Here is my modern retelling of the story:

DOWN AT THE DOCKS

by Brett Rutherford

One-eyed Paulie had this Gal, you see.
Gal was all they called her.
Oh, he had his eye on her.
She had both eyes on Acey,
who, having a preference
for the sailors,
wouldn’t even glance her way.

It was sad to watch it happen.
Paulie made his eye-patch wet
with weeping — Gal moped away,
pale as dried cod — Acey
missed out on all the flirting
that other guys would swoon for,
’cause he was buyin’ drinks
for all the Merchant Marine.

It reached a head one night
when Paulie caught Acey
behind The Gold Talon,
and skewered him good
with an old harpoon.
All things considered,
cops looked the other way,
Acey being, you know,
what was he doing there,
anyway, up to no good?

Then Paulie found Gal
just walkin’ the pier,
and as he tells it, “Look,
I just grabbed her.
I couldn’t help myself.”

She slid away from him
as smooth as an eel.
Fell in, she did, and sank.
They dived, they looked.
No sign of her.

Down at the docks, you need
to stay clear of one-eyed Paulie.
All he can think about is Gal,
and all he says is that
she’s off with the mermaids,
not dead at all, not dead,
not that. He moans,
“All I did was to grab her.
I couldn’t help myself.”

Father and Son

The Titans were a nasty lot. Saturn (Kronos in Greek) always devoured his own offspring to prevent a new generation of gods. A rock was substituted for Zeus, so that the boy could be reared in secret in an oak tree. Later he would attack his father, cutting him open and releasing his brothers and sisters from the Titan's belly.

All of which provoked me to write this little epigram this morning:

FATHER AND SON

Saturn, thou sluggard,

swallowing stone,

mistaking a rock

for a swaddled babe,

you will pay!

Zeus slipped away,

oak-coddled

by his mother Rhea,

taking with acorn-milk

the seed of rebellion.

One day your bloated

belly will be cut,

the never-digested

rocks and Titans

spewn out to make

a whole new Mythos,

somewhat less cruel

and capricious

than the elder

monstrosities.

Gaze Not Upon Her

by Brett Rutherford

after Callimachus, Hymn V, 56-130

Whom the gods bless

     they also blast,

heedless of hurt

     and frail mortality.

What maid would not want

to be Athena’s girl-friend,

to idle afternoons

in sheltered forests, and dine

on fine fruit and ambrosia?

Even so, one nymph of Thebes

was beloved by Pallas.

Hither and yon, to Thespiae,

Corneia and Boetia,

she rode the goddess’s chariot.

In every place the maidens dallied,

inhaling the altar offerings

or watching the ritual dances,

favored Chariclo always led them.

Although a mother she was,

neither her son nor husband dared

be jealous of an immortals’ favor.

One day Athena led her,

overlooking Thebes,

to the sweet-water fountain

of Pegasus on Mount Helicon, 

where they undid their robes

and, never blushing, bathed.

In the stillness of noon,

     not even a bird sang —

O silence ominous

     in which the splash of water

and its spray alone prevailed.

If only some young huntsman,

oblivious of the place made holy,

had not come charging through

to the very brim of fountain,

high on his horse, and looking down

on the faces, breasts, and bellies —

all taken in, in one astonished

glance, by a  nearly beardless

boy, quiver and bow and fletched

arrows behind him lie an aureole

of tiny, angry spear-heads.

The hounds came up behind;

the horse reared, the young man

choked back his cry of astonishment.

Athena’s wrath flashed out as quick

as the glance of a Gorgon.

Just as a boiled egg goes white, 

so blanched the orbs of the intruder.

He fell to the ground, and only foam

came from his still-opened mouth.

Such is the punishment

for any mortal who looks upon

a god when he is uninvited.

Chariclo, wrapped fast in her discarded

robes, now rushed to hold the fallen youth.

Athena raged: “What thirst or madness

made you come up to this flowing madness,

servant of Thebes? Did some dire spirit

compel you and your dogs to ride this way?

Still he lay speechless. “What have you done,
Athena — goddess of power supreme! — you

must undo this very moment. Not servant

of my husband lies before you — ah, no! —

but his own son, my errant son, whom you,

the goddess, have blinded! ”

                                               “Foolhardy he

came, and he has seen the breast and body

of Athena, the closest thing to Zeus

that has ever ranged the earth and heavens.

That even one doe or one gazelle should fall

to an arrow while we bathe here in peace —”

Here the companion wailed aloud in grief.

“Sad hill, sad Helicon, sad Thebes! Goddess

of inhuman pride and malice! I’d give

a hecatomb of deer if I could this avert!

With this, you have destroyed my life. No more

shall I to this fountain come, but share

in the night eternal to which you curse my son.

No more have I to do with goddesses.”

With keening voice the nightingale might

study for a lesson in mourning, she fled,

leading the stiff and stumbling victim away.

Athena, startled, drew up her raiment,

and, putting on her Pallas-wise helmet,
the opposite of her war-like demeanor,

strode after them and spoke again.

“Take back, o noble lady, these angry words.

I did not will his blindness. Think you I love

to take the sight from some mother’s son?

This law goes back to Kronos and is inbuilt

into the interplay of Titan, god and man.

Those who look upon a god unbidden,

see not; as one who overhears the counsel

of gods is stricken deaf and mute. As fixed

into the scheme of things as threads of Fate

is this cruel law. My anger triggered it,

and I cannot call it back.”

                                          “Then I,”

Chariclo said, “must never look again

on she I loved beyond all others.” 

Her eyes she then averted, nevermore

to look on those grey orbs she cherished.

“I can do this, Chariclo, so that you may

not curse me and my memory entirely:

Know that your son shall honored be,

so that his name shall echo in history.

I will make him a seer whom poets name,

and when he speaks from deep inside

the well of wisdom and foresight I grant,

priests will kneel and kings tremble.

He shall know the birds and their omens,

from their mere shadow falling on

his otherwise unseeing eyes. An oracle

shall he be, and live to many years beyond

a normal human span. Boetia shall know him,

and Cadmus, and the Kings of Thebes.

His feet shall not stumble, for a seeing staff,

taller than his own head, shall he bear,

and it shall guide him on land and sea,

and when he joins the shades, he shall not

be there among the ones made sightless

or speechless by their own evil doings.

He shall dine at the table of great Hades.”

The goddess spoke, and bowed her head, by which

great sign her Father Zeus was likewise bound,

for this was the power he gave her, since

no mother gave her birth, but from the brow

of the mighty Olympian she was delivered.

Fitting that Wisdom had no mother, nor did

she stumble childish on the way to power.

With thunder above, Zeus gave assent.

Thus ever were Wisdom and Power

in true accord. Hail goddess, and hail

to Chariclo and her god-empowered son.

Where shall fame take him, and who

shall tremble when his low voice speaks

the truth that those with eyes deny?

Who shall know and hear Tiresias?

The Isle of Achilles

 

Reading Homer closely and deeply is a life-changing experience. It provides you with an alternate life so deeply conveyed and so passionately described that you feel as though you have lived it. The only engagement with art with equal emotion that I know of, is the experience of opera. Just remembering some key incidents in Homer can bring me to a point where I can hardly speak the words, so overcome with emotion am I.

Robert Bridges wrote this elegant and haunting poem about the island where a shrine to Achilles brought many visitors, who made sacrifices there in hopes of receiving a sign or a vision from the world's greatest hero. The 1899 poem also made a brave and explicit approbation of the love between Achilles and his fellow warrior Patroclus, rather a strong statement just four years after the Oscar Wilde trial.

Bridges' English is exquisite, and the poem leaves me breathless. I wish I had written this, but Bridges seems to have squeezed from Greek sources just about the last words that can be said about this subject. His Greek quote is from Euripides' Andromache.

ROBERT BRIDGES (1844-1930)

THE ISLE OF ACHILLES
 
(FROM THE GREEK)
 
Τὁν φἱλτατὁν σοι παἱδ' ἑμοἱ τ', Ἁχιλλἑα
ὑψει δὑμους ναἱοντα νησιωτικοὑς
Δευκἡν κατ' ἁκτἡν ἑντὁς Εὑξεἱνου πὁρου. 
Eur. And. 1250.
 
Voyaging northwards by the western strand
Of the Euxine sea we came to where the land
Sinks low in salt morass and wooded plain:
Here mighty Ister pushes to the main,
Forking his turbid flood in channels three
To plough the sands wherewith he chokes the sea.{360}

Against his middle arm, not many a mile
In the offing of black water is the isle
Named of Achilles, or as Leukê known,
Which tender Thetis, counselling alone
With her wise sire beneath the ocean-wave
Unto her child's departed spirit gave,
Where he might still his love and fame enjoy,
Through the vain Danaan cause fordone at Troy.
Thither Achilles passed, and long fulfill'd
His earthly lot, as the high gods had will'd,
Far from the rivalries of men, from strife,
From arms, from woman's love and toil of life.
Now of his lone abode I will unfold
What there I saw, or was by others told.

There is in truth a temple on the isle;
Therein a wooden statue of rude style
And workmanship antique with helm of lead:
Else all is desert, uninhabited;
Only a few goats browse the wind-swept rocks,
And oft the stragglers of their starving flocks
Are caught and sacrificed by whomsoe'er,
Whoever of chance or purpose hither fare:
About the fence lie strewn their bleaching bones.

But in the temple jewels and precious stones,
Upheapt with golden rings and vials lie,
Thankofferings to Achilles, and thereby,
Written or scratch'd upon the walls in view,
Inscriptions, with the givers' names thereto,
Some in Romaic character, some Greek,
As each man in the tongue that he might speak
Wrote verse of praise, or prayer for good to come,
To Achilles most, but to Patroclus some;
For those who strongly would Achilles move
Approach him by the pathway of his love.

Thousands of birds frequent the sheltering shrine,
The dippers and the swimmers of the brine,
Sea-mew and gull and diving cormorant,
Fishers that on the high cliff make their haunt
Sheer inaccessible, and sun themselves
Huddled arow upon the narrow shelves:—
And surely no like wonder e'er hath been
As that such birds should keep the temple clean;
But thus they do: at earliest dawn of day
They flock to sea and in the waters play,
And when they well have wet their plumage light,
Back to the sanctuary they take flight
Splashing the walls and columns with fresh brine,
Till all the stone doth fairly drip and shine,
When off again they skim asea for more
And soon returning sprinkle steps and floor,
And sweep all cleanly with their wide-spread wings.


From other men I have learnt further things.
If any of free purpose, thus they tell,
Sail'd hither to consult the oracle,—
For oracle there was,—they sacrificed
Such victims as they brought, if such sufficed,
And some they slew, some to the god set free:
But they who driven from their course at sea
Chanced on the isle, took of the goats thereon
And pray'd Achilles to accept his own.
Then made they a gift, and when they had offer'd once,
If to their question there was no response,
They added to the gift and asked again;
Yea twice and more, until the god should deign
Answer to give, their offering they renew'd;
Whereby great riches to the shrine ensued.
And when both sacrifice and gifts were made
They worship'd at the shrine, and as they pray'd
Sailors aver that often hath been seen
A man like to a god, of warrior mien,
A beauteous form of figure swift and strong;
Down on his shoulders his light hair hung long
And his full armour was enchast with gold:
While some, who with their eyes might nought behold,
Say that with music strange the air was stir'd;
And some there are, who have both seen and heard:
And if a man wish to be favour'd more,
He need but spend one night upon the shore;
To him in sleep Achilles will appear
And lead him to his tent, and with good cheer
Show him all friendliness that men desire;
Patroclus pours the wine, and he his lyre
Takes from the pole and plays the strains thereon
Which Cheiron taught him first on Pelion.


These things I tell as they were told to me,
Nor do I question but it well may be:
For sure I am that, if man ever was,
Achilles was a hero, both because
Of his high birth and beauty, his country's call,
His valour of soul, his early death withal,
For Homer's praise, the crown of human art;
And that above all praise he had at heart
A gentler passion in her sovran sway,
And when his love died threw his life away.

 

From New Poems (1899). Published in final form in Poetical Works of Robert Bridges. (1936) London: Oxford University Press. Revised edition 1953, 1964, pp.359-362.

Illustration from Wikimedia Commons: Sosias (potter, signed). Painting attributed to the Sosias Painter (name piece for Beazley, overriding attribution) or the Kleophrades Painter (Robertson) or Euthymides (Ohly-Dumm) - Photograph by user Bibi Saint-Pol, 2008. 

The Story of Niobe, Parts 4 to 6 (end)

A royal suicide. Seven daughters killed in twilight by all-but-invisible arrows. The weeping Queen Niobe turns to stone.

by Brett Rutherford

Adapted from Book VI of Ovid's

4

Nothing moves swifter than the knowledge of death.

King Amphion, Niobe’s consort, had spied the cloud

and shivered as he stood beneath it, powerless.

He could not make out in the tumult below,

just who was slaying whom and why, for his eyes

with age were failing him. The shouting and screams

roared into the palace, up stairs and into his rooms

where he was wont to linger with laws and testaments.

The one who told him could not get the words.

“How many dead?” King Amphion demanded.

“All seven, sire!” — “All seven what?” — “Your sons!

All dead in the span of minutes from vengeful arrows.”

“No man can bear such grief and live!” cried Amphion,

and taking the messenger’s own sword, he slew himself.

 

Enter Niobe, to the blood-stained chamber

where she hardly noticed her perish’d consort.

At the heavens she raged, inconsolable.

The women veiled themselves in pity

as the disheveled Queen removed herself

to the corpse-ridden playing field. None envied her

now, and all who had exalted her, averted their faces.

One by one, she threw herself upon the bodies

of her seven sons engored; with blood she smeared

her raiment, and it stained her face and hair.

Each pair of dead lips she kissed with her own,

last echo of a mother’s first infant blessing.

She lifted bruised arms, all bronzed with gore

to the never-moving storm-cloud, then turned

her face toward where Latona’s temple stood,

hurling her imprecation so loud the very walls

of Thebes were shocked, and trembled.

“Feast now upon my grief, Latona, cruel

beyond the imagination of Tartarus,

feast and glut your heart with my sorrow.

It is endless — it will feed you forever!

Seven sons now I must burn and bury,

sevenfold my suffering. Exult, victorious

only in hatred. Your named shall be cursed

as the by-word for cruelty. Feast then,

and fill your empty heart with my sorrow.

 

“But, ha! your victory is not a victory.

My misery is greater still than your contentment

off in that place where no one knows your name.

Who will come to your temple now? Doors boarded

up, its walls leaning every which way, in years

to come it will be a ruin, a chicken-coop.

“After so many deaths, I triumph still!

Seven sons gone, I still have seven daughters!”

 

5

The day advanced, and dusk drew near. Cut trees

and timbers carried forth from the city took shape

into seven hastily-made biers, and the seven sisters,

robed in black, their faces smeared with weeping,

gathered around the scene of horror. All heard

the sky-shaking throb of the bowstring on high,

and one, while drawing out the arrow from inside

her brother’s raven-torn innards, toppled dead

before any saw that a missile had stricken her.

Some thought she merely fainted, but others saw

the pulsing flow of blood beneath her.

Another as she stood next her grieving mother

was cut down just as suddenly. Dim light

and enfeebl’d sight made some assume

the daughters were passing out with grief.

 

Latona’s daughter died before her, lips clenched,

without a word of reproach or a farewell cry.

One tried to flee, hoping her robes of black

would vanish into twilight. So she fell too,

and her sister, hard upon her, tumbled down

and both, in a heap, were arrowed, expiring.

One hid, but from the overarching cloud

there was no shelter; she fell,

defiant, until the angry shaft toppled her.

 

Now six had suffered wounds, and bleeding,

died. Niobe raced to her last daughter’s side.

The girl crouched, and Niobe tried to drape

her blood-stained robe to cover her.

Niobe screamed to the heavens again. “Latona!

Or you who come to slaughter in Latona’s name!

Just leave me one, the smallest, she is nothing

to you, my last vestige on earth. The littlest

one I beg you to spare me! Just one!” Yet even

as she prayed for the mercy of the implacable,

another shaft fell, sure aimed, rending her robe

and killing the hidden, crouching girl beneath it.

 

6

Now sits Niobe, childless truly, amid the gore

of fourteen slaughtered children, the sons on biers,

the daughters scattered in bloody pools

as wolf and dog, crow and raven, red-eyed

begin their death caw, the taste for flesh

that attends every battlefield. None dare to move,

except to melt away to their darkened homes,

where, hearths extinguished, the Thebans sat

sleepless and transfixed with terror.

Niobe sees the bier she had not noticed:

the self-slain Amphion from whom no sons

or daughters more could issue, fate sealed

upon Niobe’s curse forever. Silence was all

amid the creeping night, the ominous wingbeats

of carrion seekers. What horror at dawn

when the night’s feasting would be revealed!

 

Sun rises on the unpeopled field of Mars.

The birds are at their business. A wary wolf

circles the motionless Niobe.

Her hair, a mass of blood clots, does not move.

There is no breeze to stir it. Her face grows pale

as though her own blood had gone to ground.

Her eyes are fixed on nothing, She does not stir.

Aside from her, the picture is void of human life. Eyes

frozen, tongue locked in roof of mouth, teeth

clenched on final horror, she weeps. She weeps.

She wills her neck to bend — it disobeys;

she orders her arms to move, but they will not.

Her legs and feet are frozen. Slowly her heart,

the proud heart and all her innards, petrify.

She is nothing but a rockpile in woman’s form,

but still she weeps, tears of their own accord

flow out and down the semblance of face.

 

During the night that followed, some gods

took pity and lifted the weeping Niobe on high

dropping her back to a hillside in Phrygia,

where she weeps still, and forever,

a perpetual spring in a wall of limestone,

 

Who learns not from the lessons of punished Pride

must pay the toll of sorrow and extinction!

 

 

 

The Story of Niobe, Part 1

This gruesome tale from Ovid encompasses the narcissist pride of a haughty ruler, fourteen murders, one suicide, and a petrifaction. Here is Part 1. The opening stanza about Arachne is the "hook" that Ovid used to connect a story to its successor.

by Brett Rutherford

adapted from Book VI of Ovid's

Part 1

A woman turned to a spider! Whoever heard of such a thing?

All the towns in Lydia trembled at the horror of it. It spreads

through Phrygia, the shattered pride of Arachne, daring to spin

and embroider in contest with Pallas Athena. Self-hanged

in spite, she is doomed to six-leggedness, to sit hungry always

at the heart of a dread weaving all know to be a place of poison.

 

You would think her friend and playmate Niobe, might weep

to recall how they ran the fields of Maeonia together,

and drank the bees’ nectar in the shadow of Mount Sipylus.

Yet the girl learned nothing from the sad example of how

the wise, concerning gods, should speak little and praise much.

Niobe had what some call pride of place, beside an artful spouse,

queen in her realm, high born and married to Thebes, but these

were motes of arrogance beside her pride of motherhood.

None need call out she was the most blessed of mothers,

since she so frequently uttered it herself. Fourteen times

blessed was her matronly belly, once even twinned!

 

Blameless old Manto, who could not help herself,

daughter as she was to Tiresias, got up with an impulse

divine and, taking a torch and banner, raised a throng,

saying to all in the marketplace, “Come, Theban women!

Go to the temple of Latona the Titaness. Without delay,

give up to her and to Apollo and Artemis, her offspring,

prayers and costly incense. Make laurel wreaths

and don them,  and follow me in loud procession!

Latona exults to speak through me!” The women obey,

and ripping from the laurels every reachable branch

they wound their brows with the sacred leaves and marched.

Up to the very moon and stars the incense rose, smoke, too

from everything else they heaped into the altar fires.

 

But last, and wrathful, comes Queen Niobe, her cohorts

of the palace unasked and unconsulted, no wreath

upon her brow, gold-and-white Phrygian robes aglow

as she steps into the shadowed temple. Crowds bow

and part; some kneel at the royal presence among them.

Manto freezes in her supplicatory pose, back turned

to the Queen and facing Latona’s time-blackened

visage. Niobe halts, compels with wrath’s eye-darts

that the priestess turn to face her. Neck, head, and crown

make her seem a giant among them. “What is this?”

she demands of them. “You would rather worship a stone,

a thing behind a curtain, an “Old One” you only know

by reputation? No incense for me? No laurels for me?

Must I be dead before the people worship me?

Do you know who my father was? Tantalus! Tantalus!

The only man ever to take food from the gods’ table.

Sister to the glimmering Pleiades my mother is.

The one who holds the vault of the Heavens

upon his shoulder, yes, Atlas himself, I call

my grandfather. I am descended from Titans

and as such I can call Zeus my grandfather, should

I ever have need to trouble him. In Phrygia,

where they know who is who, they revere and fear me.”

 

The women tremble. None say a word. Manto is like

a woman who has seen a Gorgon, no sound from her

defends the interrupted prayer to Latona, whose ears

hear all through the rude unpolished stone of her likeness.

 

Niobe cannot stop herself. “Queen of the Royal House

of Cadmus am I. The stones you walked to come here,

the walls of the palace and city of Thebes, rose up

at the magic sound of my husband’s lyre,

and the labor of the men of Thebes, those very rocks,

if they could speak, would acknowledge me.

 

“There is nothing here but a shack and a face of stone.

You all know how in the palace, the eye cannot see

the end of its wealth and splendor. Why this? Why here?

Do I not have the eye and brow and shoulders of Zeus,

the grace of a Hera if not an Aphrodite? All say it is so.

And add to this my proof of glory: my seven sons, our

seven sons, the glory of Thebes, and my seven daughters,

our seven daughters, and for them each a warrior king

to be my seven sons-in-law.  Dare you to call me proud

without warrant? Dare any of you?” All are silent.

The incense hangs beneath the temple roof.

 

Her fury at their silence rises. “So you prefer to me,

decked as you are with stolen laurels from my trees,

that Titaness Latona, daughter of somebody named Coeus,

whom no one has ever heard of — Latona, whose

pregnancy the Earth spat out, denied a spot of land

to give birth to her progeny, until the spirit of Delos

took pity and said, ‘Vagrant Titan, light down

on this vagrant island.’ Born they were, with Pity

as their stepfather and a bare rock as home,

a rock that floated hither and yon for centuries.

The land did not want her. The sea denied her.

The starry universe spat at the sound of her name.

 

“And what did Latona do? She bore two children. Two.

I have done seven times that, and might do more.

Happy am I, and blessed, and happy shall I be.

Why ask anything of all-but-forgotten gods

when you are safe with me, too great

and too well-descended to fear bad luck?

If drought comes, the stores are full. It passes.

If sickness comes, we heal the sick. Bright day

erases the drear fog of the night of the dead.

 

“Suppose some part of my tribe of children

might be taken from me? Take two, take four.

I still have five times as many as she! Latona,

as such things go, is practically childless!

 

“Go back to your looms, and to the market,

go back to your homes and gardens,” Niobe demands.

“Cast off the laurels as you pass the door.

I will hear no more of Latona.”

 

The women obey, and yet they mumble the name

of the slighted Titaness instead of that

of the proud and angry Queen of Thebes.

Manto, alone, falls to her knees and weeps.

Young Girl's Prayer to Eos, at Corinth

I pray to rosy-fingered dawn,

the goddess Eos,

for a good day. Today

especially, I need the luck.

I call her mama.

She calls me daughter,

and other endearments:

my little ransom, my lock
of golden ram-fleece,
my little vindication.
My real name a murmur only

as she prays for herself and for me,

to the floor-crack goddess

whose name is contagion

to even utter aloud.

The old nurse Iole calls her "mistress,"

and fears her tantrums,

her whip-snaps over rusty water

or herbs picked in haste

without their medicinal roots.

Yet mama takes counsel

from the only countrywoman she has

among these Attic strangers.

What would she do if Iole

were not there to hold her back?

I dread to think it.

Only papa calls her by name --

always a trembling vocative

as though she were a goddess,

each glance or word or embrace

a begged-for beneficence.

As it should be,

considering our lineage,

daughters of kings.

Just days ago he called to me.

I ran to meet him. Beware

your mother, he warned me.

When her eyes go all black

the way they do most every day now,

I want you to run and hide.

Of course I didn’t.

I do the eye thing, too,

but not as well as my mother does.

Just yesterday, beneath the oak,

on the hilltop in view of the palace

mama and I made a little hecatomb,

and as she watched and said the words,

I burned the effigy of the king,

and a blond-haired doll

to represent his daughter.

And papa? I asked,

thrusting the helmeted doll

head first into the twig-fire,

shall we burn papa?

She seized the doll and squeezed it.

No, she said. Not papa.

And she held it to her bosom,

eyes closed and rocking,

so long that I crept away.

Let me never love anyone

if it hurts that much!

Another day, Eos:

promise me the dawn

of tomorrow, and all will be well.

For this is the day

of my initiation: the world below,

and the one above both joined

in a terrible drama.

And here it comes: she is calling us.

Children, children, come!

I tremble and look at my brother.

She is at the doorway,

her eyes all black, her arms

extended rigidly.

Darker, lower, her voice again:

Children, children come! Now!

I push my brother,

the golden-locked fool. You first,

I say. He runs to her embrace.

I watch what she does.

It is over quickly, as with a chicken

or a hare. Come daughter,

come! she beckons me.

I step over my brother. It is my turn.

My eyes go to Hecate. I lift

my throat and take in my grasp

my mama’s trembling knife hand.

I know I am there. I know

a crimson ribbon is leaving me

and flooding everywhere.

I hear the howl of a man.

It is papa. He has seen it.

I hear the long, low laughter

as mama mocks him.

In a while I will do

what mama taught me.

My eyes will return from Hecate,

and the ribbon of my blood

will furl back inward,

and I shall be whole again.

Who asks for this day, Eos,

and for another dawn tomorrow?

I am Medea, daughter of Medea.

And my daughter who comes after

will be Medea, daughter of Medea.

And we will make men sorry

they were ever born.