badstar

Just posed this over at the blog

Marsayas, After the Contest

You cut to kill, but I may yet survive
and if I do, you've given me much to consider.
Laid bare to blood-drenched muscle,
every movement, every slight breeze
sears my nerves with fresh pain.

If I die, surely it will be of agony, not injury.

I don't think you will be wearing my hide;
such is undoubtedly well beneath you.
Though perhaps someday I will wear yours:
not in death- for you, there is none
but if someday you shed your skin
like you shed a tear, molting like a snake,
if I should come along at just the right time,
I would seize it up and wrap it around me-
could I then be you, for just a moment
before your essence is lost?

Yes, I am delirious.

You may think me a fool to challenge a god,
but even if I die today, I will be immortal.

This is a departure from my usual writings of ridiculously personal, intense sort of things or the various Homeric-style hymns that I've been writing for a while. I first tried to write this poem probably about a year ago, but in a different form...and it just wouldn't write.

Well, today, it did. This is from the myth of Evadne, a nymph who loved Apollo. As you can probably guess from the title, this isn't the complete story (I posted the story, from Pindar's 6th Olympic Ode on my blog http://painandlight.wordpress.com/2009/03/31/in-reference-to-my-previous-post/

Evadne, Unknowing of Alpheios's Consultation of the Delphic Oracle

How could I not have loved the beautiful god
whose hair and skin are like gold
and whose eyes burn a cool fire?

He spoke to me in a voice so sweet,
words flowed from his tongue like silk.
And the songs he sang, so lovely, surely the Muses
must weep at their beauty.

(And I few, I think, would elicit a blush
even from Erato herself, though this is never mentioned
in the stories they tell of a god such as He.
It wouldn't be proper.)

And when he desired for me to come with him to his bed,
he promised me no great gifts of unerring prophecy or any
dazzling trinkets that gods may offer in the moment of seduction,
but I had no care for these anyway;
He but asked and I went willing, for a song,
for one night that has burned itself on my soul.

In time I found that one night had left its mark
upon more than my soul, and soon I was to have a child.
A son I would have loved, but for shame cannot keep.
If I told, none would believe that he was
begotten by a god.

Four days past, in a hidden thicket I lay,
pangs of the birth like no pain I've ever felt before.
He sent to my side help, the birth-goddess and the Fates.
When it ended, I cried in relief, and I cried in joy, short-lived
and love for the child, so small, now in my arms.

It is with great anguish I chose to do this thing.
I don't know how I will live with it, I'll worry about that later.
If I think twice now, I'll turn back.

In this field of violets, surrounded by honeybees, I'll lay him down.
I'll walk away, and I won't look back.
No doubt he will perish, but I will pray for a miracle and try to forget
this child of mine and of the god of light.

One night that has burned itself upon my soul
Now has torn my heart in two.