Metamorphoses

  the pact of Venus, hidden from all others—

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  come likewise unto me.” Even as she spoke

  the god would have prevented her from speaking,

  but all too swiftly had her words been uttered,

  which, like his oath, could not be taken back.

  He groans, distraught, and then ascends to heaven,

  and with a glance, the mists are summoned round;

  dark clouds are laced with lightning and high winds,

  and thunder too, and inescapable fire;

  as best he can, he moderates his force,

  leaving upon its shelf the thunderbolt

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  with which he hurled the hundred-handed Typhoeus

  into the fire: that would have been too much.

  Instead, he picks a bolt the Cyclops forged,

  one with reduced anger and a lower flame

  (they call such weapons his Light Artillery);

  and so appareled, came to Semele;

  but she, whose mortal body could not bear

  such heavenly excitement, burst into flames

  and was incinerated by Jove’s gift.

  Her child was torn out of her womb unfinished,

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  and—this part is scarcely credible—was sewn

  into his father’s thigh, where he was brought to term.

  His mother’s sister, Ino, secretly

  cared for the babe and then surrendered him

  to nymphs on Nysa, who hid him in their cave

  and nourished him with milk.

  And so, on earth,

  the cradle of the twice-born baby Bacchus was

  kept from harm by Fate’s decree.

  The judgment of Tiresias

  Meanwhile,

  they say that in heaven Jove had put aside

  his weighty cares, and, drink in hand, was busy

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  killing time in repartee with Juno:

  “Women get far more pleasure out of sex

  than men do,” he said. And when she denied this, they both agreed to seek the arbitration

  of the transsexual sage, Tiresias,

  who, in a leafy forest, had once profaned

  the coupling of two enormous serpents,

  by giving them a blow with his walking stick.

  A wonder, for at once he was transformed

  into a woman and remained as such

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  for seven years. But when the eighth year came, he saw the same two serpents once again

  and said, “Since striking you has the effect

  of turning one into one’s opposite,

  I’ll strike you once again.”

  And having done so,

  became the image of his former self.

  The sage agreed to settle their dispute,

  a trifling one, or so he must have thought,

  when he agreed with Jove. But Saturn’s daughter

  reacted badly when he gave his judgment,

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  and many thought her anger was excessive,

  when, for an issue of no great importance,

  she damned Tiresias to eternal blindness.

  But one god can’t undo another’s doing,

  and so Jove gave Tiresias the gift

  of foresight to replace the vision lost,

  tempering punishment with the high esteem

  he was soon held in, throughout all Boeotia,

  for the unerring answers that he gave

  to those who came to him and sought his counsel.

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  First to consult him was Liriope,

  the sky-blue nymph who had been ravished by

  the river god Cephisus when he snared her

  between his winding banks; she bore a child,

  who even as an infant was adorable,

  and whom she called Narcissus.

  When she asked

  whether her son would live to ripe old age,

  Tiresias responded with these words:

  “If he knows himself—not. For a long time

  that prophecy appeared completely groundless,

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  until the boy’s unusual obsession,

  which took his life, proved the foretelling true.

  Narcissus and Echo

  Narcissus at sixteen seemed to be both

  boy and man, and many boys and women

  desired him; but in his yielding beauty

  was such inflexibility and pride

  that no young man or woman ever moved him.

  Once, as he drove the trembling deer to his nets,

  resounding Echo sighted him, a nymph

  unable to keep still when someone spoke,

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  or speak at all before another did.

  Until this time, Echo had a body;

  though voluble, she wasn’t just a voice,

  as she is now—although she used her voice

  no oftener than she does now, repeating

  just the last words of any speech she heard.

  Juno had done this to her, for whenever

  Saturn’s daughter was poised to apprehend

  Jove in his dalliance with a mountain nymph,

  Echo, who knew full well what she was doing,

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  detained the goddess with a long recital

  of idle chatter while the nymphs escaped.

  But Juno figured out what she was up to:

  “Once too often has your tongue beguiled me;

  from now on you’ll have little use for it!”

  And that is why Echo skips now to the end of any speech she hears and then repeats it.

  One day Narcissus happened to be roaming

  the countryside when Echo happened by,

  and at the very sight of him grew hot;

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  she secretly pursued him through the woods,

  her heat increasing as she overtook him,

  as torches smeared with highly flammable

  sulfur ignite themselves, brought near a flame.

  Often she wanted to come on to him,

  accost him with endearments, tender prayers—

  but her nature won’t permit such forwardness:

  advances are denied her, though she may

  repeat, in her own voice, a sound she hears.

  That day he was cut off from his companions,

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  and called out, “Anyone here?”

  “Here!” answered Echo.

  Narcissus searches all around, astounded:

  cries out more loudly,

  “Come!” His cry returns;

  he turns around, but there’s no one approaching:

  “Why do you run away from me?” he asks,

  and the very same words are given back to him.

  He halts, astounded by that other voice:

  “Here let us come together,” he cries out,

  and Echo gave her heart with her reply,

  “Come! Together!” And leapt out of the woods,

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  eager to give her words a little help

  by swiftly embracing the desired neck;

  he flees, and fleeing, cries, “Hands off! No hugs!

  I’ll die before you’ll have your way with me!”

  “You’ll have your way with me,” Echo replied.

  Spurned, shamefaced, she slipped into the woods

  and hid herself, living alone in caves

  from that time on. And yet her love endured,

  increased even, by feeding on her sorrow:

  unsleeping grief wasted her sad body,

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  reducing her to dried out skin and bones,

  then voice and bones only; her skeleton

  turned, they say, into stone. Now, only voice

  is left of her, on wooded mountainsides,

  unseen by any, although heard by all;

  for only the sound that lived in her li
ves on.

  Narcissus

  He’d trifled with her and so many others,

  water nymphs, nymphs of the wooded mountains,

  as well as a host of male admirers.

  One of those spurned raised his hands to heaven:

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  “May he himself love as I have loved him,”

  he said without obtaining his beloved,”

  and Nemesis assented to his prayer.

  There was a clear pool of reflecting water

  unfrequented by shepherds with their flocks

  or grazing mountain goats; no bird or beast,

  not even a fallen twig stirred its surface;

  its presence nourished greenery around it,

  and the surrounding trees would keep it cool.

  Worn out and overheated from the chase,

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  here comes the boy, attracted to this pool

  as to its setting, and reclines beside it.

  And as he strives to satisfy one thirst,

  another is born; drinking, he’s overcome

  by the beauty of the image that he sees;

  he falls in love with an immaterial hope,

  a shadow that he wrongly takes for substance.

  Transfixed, suspended like a figure carved

  from marble, he looks down at his own face;

  stretched out on the ground, stares into his own eyes

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  and sees a pair of stars worthy of Bacchus,

  a head of hair that might adorn Apollo;

  those beardless cheeks, that neck of ivory,

  the decorative beauty of his face,

  and the blushing snow of his complexion;

  he admires all that he’s admired for,

  for it is he that he himself desires,

  all unaware; he praises and is praised,

  seeks and is the one that he is seeking;

  kindles the flame and is consumed by it.

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  How many times, in vain, he leans to kiss

  the pool’s deceptive surface or to plunge

  his arms into the water, keen to clasp

  the neck he glimpses but cannot embrace;

  and ignorant of what it is he looks at,

  he burns for what he sees there all the same,

  aroused by the illusion that deceives him.

  Why even try to stay this passing fancy?

  Child, what you seek is nowhere to be found,

  your beloved is lost when you avert your eyes:

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  that image of an image, without substance,

  arrives with you and with you it remains,

  and it will leave when you leave—if you can!

  For neither his hunger nor his need for rest

  can draw him off; prone on the shaded grass,

  his insatiate stare fixed on that false shape,

  he perishes by his own eyes.

  Lifting himself,

  he spreads his arms out toward the nearby woods:

  “O woods,” he cries, “tell me if any other

  has ever suffered any more than I have,

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  for surely you would know, you who have been

  a likely lurking place for so many lovers—

  was there ever one, in all the ages past

  that you recall, who was consumed like me?

  I like what I look at, but what I look at and like

  I can’t locate—”

  (So great is the confusion

  in which this lover wanders, lost!)

  “My pain

  is even greater, for no ocean lies

  between us, nor some highway without end,

  nor mountain range to cross, nor gates to scale:

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  only this shallow pool! He would be held,

  for every time I lean down to the surface

  and offer him my willing mouth to kiss,

  he, on his back, lifts up his lips toward mine—

  you’d think he could be touched!

  “So very small

  a thing it is that keeps us from our loving!

  Come out and show yourself! Why do you mock me, singular boy? Where do you take yourself?

  Surely I’m young and sufficiently attractive

  to stay your flight! Why, even nymphs have loved me!

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  “I’ve no idea what hopes you mean to raise

  with that come-hither look of yours, but when

  I’ve reached down toward you, you’ve reached up again,

  and when I laughed, why, you laughed too, and often

  I have seen tears on your cheeks when I wept;

  you second all my motions, and the movement

  of your bow-shaped lips suggests that you respond

  with words to mine—although I never hear them!

  “But now I get it! I am that other one!

  I’ve finally seen through my own image!

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  I burn with love for—me! The spark I kindle

  is the torch I carry: whatever can I do?

  Am I the favor-seeker, or the favor sought?

  “Why seek at all, when all that I desire

  is mine already? Riches in such abundance

  that I’ve been left completely without means!

  “Oh, would that I were able to secede

  from my own body, depart from what I love!

  (Now that’s an odd request from any lover.)

  My grief is draining me, my end is near;

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  soon I will be extinguished in my prime.

  This death is no grave matter, for it brings

  an end to sorrow. Of course, I would have been delighted if my beloved could have lived on,

  but now in death we two will merge as one.”

  Maddened by grief, he spoke and then turned back

  to his image in the water, which his tears

  had troubled; when he saw it darkly wavering,

  he cried out, “Stay! Where are you going? O cruel,

  to desert your lover! Touch may be forbidden,

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  but looking isn’t: then let me look at you

  and feed my wretched frenzy on your image.”

  And while he mourned, he lifted up his tunic

  and with hard palms, he beat on his bare breast

  until his skin took on a rosy color,

  as parti-colored apples blanch and blush,

  or clustered grapes, that sometimes will assume

  a tinge of purple in their unripened state;

  the water clears; he sees what he has done

  and can bear no more; just as the golden wax

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  melts when it’s warmed, or as the morning’s frost

  retreats before the early sun’s scant heat,

  so he dissolves, wasted by his passion,

  slowly consumed by fires deep within.

  Now is no more the blushing white complexion,

  the manly strength and all that pleased the eye,

  the figure that was once quite dear to Echo.

  And seeing this, she mourned, although still mindful

  of her angry pain; as often as the wretched

  boy cried, “Alas!” she answered with “Alas!”

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  And when he struck his torso with his fists,

  Echo responded with the same tattoo.

  His last words were directed to the pool:

  “Alas, dear boy, whom I have vainly cherished!”

  Those words returned to him again, and when

  he cried “Farewell!” “Farewell!” cried Echo back.

  His weary head sank to the grass; death closed

  those eyes transfixed once by their master’s beauty,

  but on the ferry ride across the Styx,

  his gaze into its current did not waver.

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  The water nymphs, his sisters, cut their locks

/>   in mourning for him, and the wood nymphs, too, and Echo echoed all their lamentations;

  but after they’d arranged his funeral,

  gotten the logs, the bier, the brandished torches,

  the boy’s remains were nowhere to be found;

  instead, a flower, whose white petals fit

  closely around a saffron-colored center.

  Bacchus and Pentheus

  Once news of this affair had circulated

  throughout the Grecian cities, the seer’s fame

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  increased deservedly; of all men, only

  King Pentheus (who mocked the gods) despised him,

  deriding his prophetic speech, and cruelly

  throwing in his face the sudden blindness

  which he had been afflicted with by Juno.

  But the old man shook his white head in warning:

  “Better, far better, had it been for you

  if you too were blind: you would then be spared

  the sight of Bacchus’ rites,” replied the seer.

  “The day of his arrival is not distant,

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  this new god who is sprung from Semele,

  and if you fail to show him fitting honors,

  the god will tear your mangled corpse to pieces

  and scatter them, your blood will stain the trees—

  will stain your mother and her sisters too!

  —It will be so! You will ignore the god,

  and you will say that in my blindness, I

  saw far too much!”

  The son of Echion

  drove the seer off before he finished speaking, but what he said would happen came to pass.

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  Liber has come! The fields reverberate

  with the ululations of the revelers;

  people come pouring from the city’s gates,

  ignoring all distinctions of rank and gender:

  men with matrons, matrons with young marrieds, nobles and nobodies all hastening

  together to these novel rites of Bacchus.

  “Children of Mars! Offspring of the Serpent!”

  cried Pentheus. “What madness clouds your judgment?

  Will clashing cymbals, blaring hornpipes, tawdry

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  illusions conquer those who have endured

  a line of flashing spears, who’ve drawn their swords,

  advancing as one man when the charge was sounded?

  Will these be overcome by women’s voices,

  by wine-soaked madness, drums and debauchery?

  “And you, elders—should I not find it strange

  that you who crossed the sea to found New Tyre,

  and made a home here for your exiled gods,

  will yield it up without a fight?

  “And you,

  my comrades, warlike men of my own age—

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  have you decided to exchange your arms

  and helmets for the thyrsus and green garlands?

  “I pray you keep in mind the stock you spring from,