Metamorphoses

  the words that customary use has sanctioned,

  nor countenances radiating joy,

  nor omens of good fortune for the couple;

  even the torch he carried merely sputtered,

  emitting only tear-producing smoke,

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  not catching fire when he whirled it round.

  And the aftermath was even more unpleasant,

  for as the bride was strolling through the grass,

  attended by the naiads, she dropped dead,

  bitten on her ankle by a snake.

  When Orpheus had mourned sufficiently

  in the upper air, he bravely went below

  lest he should leave the underworld untried;

  he made his way there by the Spartan Gates,

  and passing through the superficial forms

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  of those who had been buried up above,

  he came to Proserpina and her spouse,

  the ruler of this unattractive kingdom,

  and master of the shades.

  The Thracian bard

  plucked at his lyre and began to sing:

  “Great god and goddess, appointed to govern in Hades,

  into which every living creature relapses,

  if it is rightful for me, if I am permitted

  to shun all evasions, speaking the truth to you plainly,

  know that I have not come down here to your kingdom

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  just for the view, or to chain up the three-headed Cerberus,

  that monstrous child of Medusa, bristling with serpents;

  my wife is the cause of my journey: she stepped on an adder

  whose venom cut her life short as it spread through her body.

  I won’t deny that I wished to—and tried to—endure it,

  but Love overcame me. Above, this god is quite famous;

  whether he has the same status down here, I’m not certain,

  but even so, I would think him to be as well known,

  for unless that tale of long-ago rape was invented,

  the selfsame deity joined the pair of you, also!

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  If that’s the case, then I, by all of these frightening places,

  by mighty Chaos and by this realm of the silent, I beg you

  to weave once again Eurydice’s fate, done too swiftly.

  “We are all owed to you wholly, and though we may linger,

  later or sooner all hasten to this single dwelling.

  Everyone heads for this place, the home that is final.

  Your rule is the longest that any human encounters;

  she will be yours by right and dwell down here also,

  when her years are accomplished: I ask for her life as a favor,

  but if the Fates should deny me the gift I am seeking

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  on behalf of my wife, be sure that I will remain here,

  and you may take pleasure then in a double destruction.”

  These words, accompanied on the plucked strings,

  so moved the bloodless spirits that they wept;

  Tantalus did not seek the receding water,

  and on his wheel lay Ixion, astounded;

  the birds let go the liver, and the daughters

  of Danaüs were resting by their urns,

  while you, O Sisyphus, sat on your stone.

  Then, for the first time ever, overcome

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  by the effects of song, the Furies wept,

  nor could Persephone reject his prayer,

  nor he who rules the underworld deny him;

  Eurydice was called up from her place

  among the newly dead, and awkwardly

  came forward, limping from her recent wound.

  The Thracian bard accepted her, together

  with the condition set for her release:

  that he may not look back at all, until

  he’d exited the valley of Avernus,

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  on pain of revocation of this gift.

  He started out upon the soundless path

  that rises steeply through dense fog and darkness

  until they had come almost to the border

  of the upper earth; here Orpheus, afraid

  that she would fail him, and desiring

  a glimpse of his beloved, turned to look:

  at once she slipped back to the underworld,

  and he, because he wanted to embrace her,

  or be embraced by her, stretched out his arms—

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  but seized on nothing, that unlucky man,

  unless it was the abnegating air.

  And she now, who must die a second death,

  did not find fault with him, for what indeed

  could he be faulted for, but his constancy?

  “Farewell,” she cried out to him one last time,

  and he had scarcely heard her cry before

  she took her place again among the dead.

  The second time his wife died, Orpheus

  collapsed into no different a stupor

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  than that which came upon that timid fellow

  who looked upon the triple-headed dog,

  his middle throat encircled with thick chains;

  that fellow’s trembling did not cease until

  his former nature did, as stoniness

  arose and spread throughout his human frame;

  or as Olenos, who, though innocent,

  took on a fault wishing to seem guilty;

  and you, luckless Lethaea, once so proud

  of your great beauty, and once joined to him:

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  two hearts that beat as one are now transformed

  into a pair of stones on humid Ida.

  Orpheus prayed, desiring in vain

  to cross the river Styx a second time,

  but was prevented by the border guard;

  for seven days he sat by the river’s banks,

  unkempt, unshaven, and unfed, with naught

  but care and sorrow for his nourishment;

  complaining that the gods below were cruel,

  he sought out lofty Rhodope and Haemus.

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  Three times the Sun had finished out the year

  in Pisces of the waters. Orpheus

  had fled completely from the love of women,

  either because it hadn’t worked for him

  or else because the pledge that he had given

  to his Eurydice was permanent;

  no matter: women burned to have the bard,

  and many suffered greatly from rejection.

  Among the Thracians, he originated

  the practice of transferring the affections

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  to youthful males, plucking the first flower

  in the brief springtime of their early manhood.

  The catalogue of trees

  There was a hill and on this hill there was

  an open space, a level area

  made green by all the grasses growing there.

  The place lacked shade, until that poet born

  of heaven came to be in residence,

  and plucking his resounding lyre strings,

  he summoned many shade trees to his presence:

  the oak tree sacred to great Jupiter,

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  a grove of poplars (once Heliades)

  and the Italian oak, with deep green leaves;

  soft linden, beech and laurel (still unwed)

  with the tender hazel and the useful ash

  (providing us with spears and javelins);

  pine without knots, the acorn-laden ilex,

  the genial plane tree and the maple too,

  (unrivaled in the brilliance of its hue);

  and river-dwelling willows, lotus trees,

  thin tamarisk and boxwood evergreen,

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  and myrtle with its berries green and black,

  viburnum wi
th its berries gray and blue,

  and you as well, O twining ivy, came,

  along with tendriled vines and the vine-clad elm,

  the mountain ash, the spruce, the arbutus

  (encumbered with its fruit of brilliant red)

  and victory’s reward, the supple palm,

  and the pine tree, bare to near its shaggy top,

  so pleasing to Cybele, Mother of the Gods,

  since her beloved Attis put aside

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  his manhood for that trunk in which he stiffened.

  Cyparissus

  And present in the midst of this commotion

  was the cone-shaped cypress, who, though now a tree,

  was once a boy, beloved of that god

  by whom the bow and lyre are both strung.

  Dear to the nymphs of the Carthaean fields

  was an enormous stag whose branching antlers

  most generously shaded his own head.

  They glowed with gilding, and around his neck

  and on his shoulders lay a jeweled collar.

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  A silver amulet tied to his brow

  jiggled when he moved, and matching pearls

  hung from each ear. Fearless by nature, he

  would go into the homes of perfect strangers

  and offer up his neck to their caresses.

  But he was pleased by you above all others,

  Cyparissus, most beautiful of Ceans:

  for it was you who led him to new pastures

  and brought him to the fountain that he drank from

  and wove the varied flowers through his antlers.

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  You, like a horseman, sat upon his back,

  and joyfully you led him where you wished to,

  guiding his tender mouth with purple reins.

  It was the middle of a summer’s day,

  and high up in the sky, the swollen claws

  of the seashore-dwelling Crab baked in the heat;

  the weary stag lay on the grassy ground,

  absorbing the coolness of the woodland shade.

  Unwittingly, the boy Cyparissus

  transfixed him with his deadly javelin,

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  and as he watched him die of his cruel wound

  resolved that he himself should perish too.

  Phoebus tried everything to comfort him,

  enjoining him to moderate his grief

  and suit it to the nature of his loss;

  the boy kept groaning nonetheless and begged

  the finest (and the final) gift from heaven:

  that he should be allowed to mourn forever.

  Enormity of grief had left him drained,

  and now his limbs began to turn bright green,

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  and now the locks upon his snowy brow

  became a crown of bristles as he turned

  into a tree that sways but does not bend,

  whose slender tips look up to starry heaven.

  The god, grief-stricken, told him, “You will be

  mourned by myself, and others you will mourn,

  and by your presence, you will signal grief.”

  The songs of Orpheus

  Such was the grove the bard had gathered round him,

  and now, amidst the concourse of the birds

  and the assembled beasts, he took his seat;

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  and after he had plucked the lyre strings

  and felt the varied modes in harmony

  (though each string had its own distinctive sound),

  Orpheus began to raise his voice in song:

  Proem

  “O Muse, my mother, let Jove inspire my poem,

  for all things yield to Jove’s power; on prior occasions,

  I have sung the dominion of Jove, lifting my lyre

  to deal with so weighty a subject: the fall of the Giants,

  the bolts hurled victorious down on the fields of Phlegraea!

  But now the task of my lyre requires a lighter

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  touch as I sing of young boys whom the gods have desired,

  and of girls seized by forbidden and blameworthy passions.

  Ganymede

  “The king of heaven once burned with desire for Trojan

  Ganymede; Jupiter found an identity pleasing

  him more than even his own did: no bird but the eagle,

  bearer of Jove’s thunderbolt, could deserve this distinction.

  Without delay, as his counterfeit wings beat the air, he

  captured the boy, who, in spite of Juno’s objections,

  mixes his nectar and serves him above now in heaven.

  Hyacinthus

  “Phoebus loved you, Hyacinthus, and would have installed you

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  in heaven also, if cruel fate had permitted.

  Nevertheless, you are made—in a fashion—immortal,

  for just as often as springtime repulses the winter

  and Aries assumes the place of watery Pisces,

  you rise and break out in flowers upon the green earth.

  “My father, Phoebus, preferred you above all the others,

  abandoning Delphi, his city at the earth’s navel,

  while he frequented the banks of the river Eurotas

  and haunted unfortified Sparta, paying no mind to

  music and archery, skills that brought him great honor;

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  careless of his own pursuits, he happily carried

  the nets, and held back the dogs, and played the good sport

  by scrambling up the jagged ridges of mountains,

  while his beloved’s continual presence kept him afire.

  “The Sun stood halfway between the night driven off

  and the night that was newly approaching; bodies shed garments

  and glistened richly with olive oil, as the contestants

  prepared themselves to engage in a match with the discus.

  Phoebus threw first, sending the well-balanced object

  aloft to shatter the clouds arrayed in the distance;

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  after a long time, it fell back again to the hard earth,

  displaying not only Apollo’s great skill but his power.

  “But the imprudent youth, driven by love of the contest,

  had raced off ahead to capture the speeding discus,

  which, when it landed, bounced up again and spun back

  into your face, Hyacinthus. The selfsame pallor

  now blankets the boy and the god who kneels to embrace him,

  who gathers the fallen lad and attempts to revive him,

  who stanches his wound, and who now, by the application

  of healing herbs, tries to keep his soul from departing,

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  without success, for the wound defies the god’s treatment.

  “As when a poppy or violet grown in a garden

  among the lilies (whose tongues are thick yellow and bristly)

  breaks, and the flower’s head shrivels, droops, and collapses,

  unable to hold itself up, with downcast demeanor,

  just so the dying boy’s head, now lacking all vigor,

  unable to bear its own weight, lies flat on his shoulder.

  “‘O Spartan lad, cheated out of your youth, you are fallen,

  and the fault that I see in your wound is my own,’ cried Phoebus.

  ‘Your death is the cause of my self-reproach and my sorrow,

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  for my right hand must be charged with the crime of your murder,

  and I alone am responsible for your destruction!

  But where did I err, unless our pleasures were errors?

  Where was I wrong, unless it was wrong to have loved you?

  If only I were permitted to die or exchange my

  life for your own! But even though Fate’s law prevents this,

  you will be with me always, my lips will
never forget you!

  You will be present both in my songs and my music,

  and a flower will come into being, inscribed with my mourning;

  later, a legend involving the boldest of heroes

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  will be conjoined to this flower and read in its markings.’

  “The truth of Apollo’s words appeared as he spoke them,

  for look, where the boy’s spilled blood, now staining the grasses,

  stops being blood and at once a new flower springs up,

  shining even more brightly than Tyrian purple,

  and takes on the form, if not the color, of lilies.

  “Phoebus (who was indeed the source of this honor),

  still unsatisfied, now inscribed his own mourning

  inside the flower, in the form of the letters AI, AI,

  and left its petals marked with the cry of lamenting.

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  Nor is his Sparta ashamed of Hyacinthus, for even

  today, the city still honors him in the old manner,

  by holding the Hyacinthian festival every midsummer.

  The Propoetides and the Cerastae

  “But if you should ask Amathus, that Cyprian city

  so rich in metals, if it were proud of its daughters

  the Propoetides, it would deny them completely,

  along with those folks who were once given horns on their foreheads,

  and who, from then on, assumed the name of Cerastae.

  “Before the gates of their city, there once stood an altar

  to Jove the Welcome of Strangers; if any passed by it

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  who had not heard of the crime that had taken place there,

  and happened to glance at the bloodstains, he would have reckoned

  that priests had sacrificed tender young lambs or veal calves—

  but a guest had been slain there! Enraged by this blasphemy, Venus

  prepared to abandon her cities and farmlands on Cyprus:

  ‘But how have these places so dear, how have these cities

  sinned against me?’ she asks. ‘How have they offended?

  Better that I should exile this impious people

  or kill them—or choose something between these two fates:

  what punishment serves my purpose better than changing

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  all of them into a different kind of a being?’

  “While she was wondering what she would turn them all into,

  she happened to glance at their horns and at once was reminded

  not to change everything; leaving those parts as she found them,

  the goddess transformed all that remained of these sinners,

  their limbs and enormous torsos, into fierce bullocks.

  “Nevertheless, the indecent Propoetides

  dared to deny her divinity; in anger, Venus

  made them the first, it is said, to sell their own bodies,

  and as their shame ceased, and they lost the power of blushing,