Poetry

When Orpheus Came Back From Hades

When Orpheus came back from Hades,

We were waiting in the alder groves,

Stitching favours and bathing our feet

In the soothing waters of Hebrus,

Draping the dress we had made for her,

Cotton and silk, over the alder boughs.

We had sat up all night by the fire,

Sharing Koan wine and Delphic songs,

Talk of harvests made rich by the bounty

Of Ceres, sweet figs hanging ripe from the tree,

The force of love wrought fierce upon men of strength,

Who yoke it through heaven and hell.

As the dust kicked up from the cavern's mouth,

We rose to our feet and sang as one,

In the unshackled hope that our song would rise

And befit the glory of his triumph,

Could accompany his praise for his love,

Eurydice, brought back from the dead.

When Orpheus came back from Hades,

Empty handed, we spilled our grief

On the dusted stones, wrung our fists,

Tore our robes and drew curses from our throats

As though she had only now died at his hand,

And the loss was as raw as the first.

He was before us, and our voices fell to silence

When we saw the pebble grey stare on his face,

Eyes empty like hollowed out wood.

Even the leaves ceased their whispering sighs,

The murmuring river was muted, and when his mouth caved open,

All that came forth were his moans.

What once was beauty had withered and writhed

To the rancorous bile of despair.

As it charred our hope and curdled our joys,

Numbed our ears and clamped our minds,

We beat our heads with our palms, tore her dress

To rags, to force out the sound of our pains.

We threw ourselves at his feet, clawed at the dust,

And begged him to stop, to spare us his grief,

That the beauty of song be not turned into dirge

As the beauty of her once was turned into dust.

In the half-formed light of dawn the crows circled above

And his voice joined them in their discord.

The others who had waited his return did nothing but cry

So I reached out my hand, bent into a claw,

And tore shreds from his skin;

His blood filled my nails and I tore him again;

All wailed in concert as we fell upon him

And one by one rent him apart.

When the pieces of his body were laid in the dust,

And the ground painted red by our hands,

When our voices had fallen to lowing and moans,

Then the song that he'd sung became ours.

His head sang on, its cry now bearable

For our world was more grievous and darker, less open to hope.

We carried his limbs to the river and cast them away

Gave his corpse to the water,

Tossed his head by the hair,

Avoiding his eyes.

The currents did not drown his song,

But joined it, ushering it out to sea

To spread his requiem to the world.

Till dusk we watched it push out with the tide.

I could not pick out the moment

When his voice died, and his moan was the sound of the waves.

 

 

 

To -

I saw you once in a different light,

Your hair was magnificent

I shudder

To think you once talked to me

About break up

When I was all

About break up.

As the walls span

I bit my tongue in my head

And talked to you

About –

How I’ve reeled

To see you blush

And exploded

When we talked,

In my head

I clenched an empty fist tightly,

And wished

We were characters in another life,

Where the crashing of the waves was

Water on the beach, not

The sound of the rushing

Of blood in my head

‘What did you do?’

Cry the chorus,

‘Did you tell her, did you ask her?

Did you follow, did you pass her

By? Did you bottle it

Up? Let your heart shrivel black,

Let your keen nerve dull?

Submit to dreams, unhappy master

Of the art of self-deception?

What did you say?

Did you tell her, did you ask her?’

‘No,’ I spit,

 ‘I didn’t tell, I didn’t ask her,

Though my pulse ran faster,

And my pupils bloomed,

I retired with a joke and

My heart did not turn black

But beats still with

A red flaming passion,

A red flaming torrent

Through walls,

Down roads,

Through red melting rocks

To –

I saw you once in a different light,

Your hair was magnificent