Eurydice
I was a god's nymph of the deep ravine,
a dancer in the dusk on dandelion greens
til listening to you I felt a dog's duress
that I in your spellsong's locket be possessed.
Under the purple awning of the night
whitened stars beat down in falling flight.
I felt yet didn't hear your naked voice.
I took and later rued an arrow's choice.
And when your always-wooing sleepless noise
drew the jackal out from the sour wood,
I tried to turn and run as best I could;
you played untouched as the snake saw me destroyed.
Even then you could not let me rest,
bright in poppy sleep in the dreaming earth
but played until your will outgrew my worth
and petals bloomed on the stone of Hades' breast.
But as you pulled me up the iron route
I saw my dandelion days were all undone,
and rejoiced in the malediction of your doubt,
freed at last where death and dreams are one.
February 2022
posted for Word Garden Word List #14
where I am hosting this week for Shay, who is taking the week off. Come join us!
Note; This poem has absolutely nothing to do with Neruda, but it is what the words on the list brought out. In the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, Eurydice is seduced by the legendary music of Orpheus and his harp and marries him. One day the minor god Aristaeus sees and pursues her. As she runs away, she is bitten by a viper and dies. Orpheus famously follows her to Hades' underworld, where his singing persuades the god to let her return to the earth. ".. the condition was attached that he must walk in front of her and not look back until both had reached the upper world. Soon he began to doubt that she was there, suspecting that Hades had deceived him. Just as he reached the portals of Hades..he turned around to gaze on her face, and because
Eurydice had not yet crossed the threshold, she vanished back into the
Underworld...Several meanings for the name Eurydice have been proposed such as true judgement or profound judgement...In some accounts, she was instead called Agriope which means "savage face" ~wikipedia
Images: Orpheus and Eurydice, 1515, relief by Peter Vischer the Younger Public Domain
Eurydice Bitten By The Viper, 1508, Titian Public Domain
