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.

Down South

     After the Chinese of Li Yü (d. 978 CE)

Down South, they know what to do with springtime.

There, when my thoughts turn away

     from duty and empire, I imagine myself,

where the spring is already in progress.

Pleasure boats are in every lake now,

     the er-hu fiddles a-hum, the flute girls

exchanging shy looks with the young scholars.

The green-faced rivers are drunk with willows,

towns dust-clogged with their yellow catkins,

more flowers abloom than eye or hand can capture.

Busy are those who love this blossoming,

    busier still their sleepless nights of loving.    

Pretending to Be A Fisherman

    After the Chinese of Li Yü (d. 978 CE)

1

My bark is but a leaf,

no oar

but the will
of the errant spring breeze,

this way, that way.

A loose line of fishing string,

on its end a light hook

might serve as rope

and anchor.

The destination:

that flower-covered islet.

The prize:

 an icy cask of wine.

Since nothing here is what it is,

but what it stands for,

one or ten thousand waves,

one or ten thousand realms,

what do they matter?

I do not need the island.

I do not, at the moment, crave

the plum green savor of wine.
I have my freedom.

2

Water, the chemist says,

is incompressible.

The delicate waves,

invisible and relentless,

a unity, break up
a thousand-piled layer

of warlike snowflakes.

They never stood a chance.

Now comes the onslaught:

cloud upon cloud upon cloud

of plum and peach and cherry

bannermen from Spring’s

inevitable and drumless army

throw themselves down

upon the snowbanks.

White mists enshroud

the waiting wine cask.
I sit with fishing rod and line.

One season has fought and won,

one season has held, and died.

I am doing nothing. This boat
is in a lake that was made for me,
the lake in my own valley
between two hills on which
I have identical pavilions.

Who else

could be as happy as I am?

[rev. 2022]

Exile, Under the New Moon

Adapted from the Chinese of Li Yü

I know I should go in, now.

It is best to forget it all, better to sleep
and recall it to ghost-life; least-best

is waiting out the night here,

thinking of those who have gone.

The wind is back in the courtyard

(new wind or ever the same one?)

and the dull grass is sliced

    with new green slivers.
Spring, undeniable,  paints yellow-green

in willow shoots.

Long I recline on the balustrade,

waving away my servant, a nay

to the tonic of the waiting teacup.

I am alone. I am not

reciting old poems. My mouth

is clamped with the forgetting

of mere words. All ears,

I wait for for the next west-east

fluttering amid the bamboo leaves

wind of a new moon as always.

Away, where I am missed

and amid those I despair of,

exactly the same sky shivers.

Rubbing their hands

     together, the pi-pa players

await my orders. What tune

can I order amid the willow rush,

the ruffle of wind in the cat-tails?

I gesture them to stillness. They bow.

Old Chen, I see, has not removed

the hundred-year-old wine jar,

nor my ink pot and its brushes.

As for calligraphy, what is mine

against that cracked-ice poem

that just now melts on the lake face.

On the deep, dark terrace behind me

burns a single candle, one ember

beside it, last breath of incense.

The past.   The past.   The dawn

that I am facing is solitary;

there seems scant need to undress

but to rise and re-dress again,

for whom,  or for what?

I feel in my hair the gnawing frost,

as on my brow the last snow

hovers at edge of vision

and refuses to melt.

I     will     just    sit.

Thought is unthinkable.