Metamorphoses

  much less than modest, more than maidenly;

  as she began recounting the day’s hunt,

  he interrupted her with an embrace

  that clearly showed his criminal intent.

  She did as much as any woman could

  (if only you had been a witness, Juno,

  your judgment would have been much less severe);

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  she fought against him but was just a girl;

  and can a mere girl fight off a grown man?

  Can anyone fight off great Jupiter?

  Victorious, Jove now withdraws to heaven

  leaving the Arcadian behind him

  to trace her way back from that knowing grove,

  now hateful to her—and almost forgetting

  her quiver full of arrows and her bow.

  But look—the goddess with her company

  approaches on the slopes of Maenalus,

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  well pleased with that day’s feral body count,

  and calls out when she sees her. Terrified

  that it is Jove disguised again, she flees;

  but when she sees the nymphs around the goddess,

  she is relieved and joins their company.

  How difficult it is not to reveal

  a guilty conscience in one’s countenance!

  She does not lift her gaze up from the ground,

  nor walk beside the goddess as she used to,

  nor take the lead; and she is silent now—

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  that and her blushing show her loss of honor.

  The countless indications of her guilt

  went by Diana, much too innocent

  to recognize loss of virginity—

  they say her nymphs were well aware of it.

  Nine months elapsed. Now wearied of the heat,

  the goddess broke off her pursuits and came

  to a gelid grove in which a babbling brook

  poured over polished sands. She approved the place

  and stirred the shallow water with her foot;

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  it, too, won her approval: “No one is near

  to spy on us,” she said. “Come—let us undress

  and take a dip in this pellucid stream.”

  And while the rest of them undressed at once,

  one blushed and sought excuses for delay,

  until the others snatched away her shift,

  baring her body—and her crime as well.

  The dumbstruck girl attempted to conceal

  her swollen belly. “Get away from here!”

  Diana said. “Do not defile this spring!”

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  And with that drove her from their company.

  The consort of almighty Jupiter

  had long since learned about this situation,

  but put off vengeance till the time was ripe;

  no reason to postpone it any longer,

  for now a boy named Arcas had been born

  to Lady Juno’s husband’s concubine,

  a further source of grief. And now she turned

  her baleful eyes and mind in their direction:

  “Oh, very nice indeed,” she said. “Home wrecker!

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  Nothing would do but that you must conceive,

  and publish the disservice that you’ve done me,

  bearing your witness to my lord’s disgrace!

  Ah! But you will not get away with it;

  I’ll take away the beauty that delights

  you and my husband both, you thoughtless thing!”

  And with those words, she seized her by the hair

  and threw her down, face-forward on the ground.

  The girl stretched out her arms in supplication;

  her arms began to bristle with black hairs,

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  her hands now served as feet, tipped with sharp claws,

  and the mouth that Jove had praised so recently

  was now a pair of widely gaping jaws!

  To keep her from successfully appealing

  to Jupiter, her speech was snatched away:

  only a growl from deep within her chest,

  a rumble, hoarse and menacing, remained.

  Within the bear, there was a human mind,

  however; constant groans expressed her grief

  as she reared up and raised her hands to heaven,

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  her gestures showing what she could not say:

  the pain of Jovian ingratitude.

  How often she would be too terrified

  to lie down by herself in the deep woods,

  and wandered to the fields near her old home!

  How often had a baying pack of hounds

  driven her upward through the steep ravines;

  how many times the huntress was the hunted.

  Often she hid herself at the sight of beasts,

  forgetting that she was a beast herself.

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  And the bear was frightened by the sight of bears

  up in the mountains—and afraid of wolves,

  although her father had been changed to one.

  And now here is Lycaon’s grandson, Arcas;

  at age fifteen, the special circumstances

  of his conception are unknown to him;

  while he pursues his quarry through ravines

  and on the mountain pastures they prefer,

  while he wraps up the woods of Arcady

  in woven nets, he comes upon his mother.

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  And when she sees him, she stands motionless

  and seems to recognize him as her son;

  fearing he knows not what, he flees from her

  unmoving eyes that fix on him forever;

  and as she tries to close the gap between them,

  he turns to thrust his spear into her breast!

  Jove stayed his hand and then expunged together

  their abominations and identities,

  bearing them upward through the empty air

  and imposing them on heaven in the form

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  of two adjacent constellations.

  When

  her husband’s mistress gleamed among the stars,

  rage-swollen Juno descended to the level

  of white-haired Tethys and venerable Oceanus,

  gods whom the others often reverence.

  And when they asked what brought her there, she said:

  “You wish to know why I, the queen of heaven,

  have come here from my airy habitation?

  Another has usurped my lofty place!

  Call me a liar if you do not see,

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  when darkness has obscured the nighttime sky,

  there, in the place of highest honor, where

  the smallest circle revolves around the pole,

  two constellations put out to insult me!

  “And truly, why should any hesitate

  to take on Juno or to fear her wrath,

  who only helps the ones that she would harm?

  How vast my power and how great my deeds!

  I would not let her keep her human form,

  and the result is—she is a goddess now!

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  Thus do I punish those who do me wrong!

  Thus do I wield my great authority!

  “Let him restore her former face and figure,

  eliminating all the beastliness,

  as once before he did—in Io’s case:

  since Juno is deposed, why shouldn’t he

  remarry—and become Lycaon’s son-in-law?

  “But if the disdain he shows your foster child

  arouses you to anger, then deny

  this constellation your cerulean depths,

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  drive off these interlopers who have been

  turned into stars—the wages paid to sin!

  —and keep this slut from dipping in your waters.”


  Tethys and Oceanus gave assent,

  and Juno in her handy chariot

  was carried upward through the melting air

  by peacocks fitted out with Argus’ eyes

  quite recently—in fact, at the same time

  that your white plumage suddenly turned black,

  loquacious raven.

  The raven and the crow

  For once upon a time

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  those wings of his were silvery snow-white,

  immaculate as are the wings of doves,

  or as those geese whose vocal vigilance

  would one day keep the Capitol from harm,

  and no less white than the water-loving swan.

  It was that tongue of his that did him in;

  through his loquacity, he came to ruin

  and turned from white into its opposite.

  There was no one in all of Thessaly

  more beautiful than Coronis of Larissa,

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  and surely a delight to you, Apollo,

  while she was either true—or undetected.

  Apollo’s raven caught her in the act

  and that inexorable tattletale

  went flying off to see his lord and master

  in order to disclose her guilty secret.

  Eager for news, that chatterbox, the crow,

  caught up to him and flapped along beside,

  but when he learned the journey’s purpose, said,

  “This course will get you nowhere, friend, believe me!

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  Do not dismiss my warning: pay attention

  to what I once was and to what I am now,

  then ask why I deserved this transformation.

  You will discover that my loyalty

  was what destroyed me!

  “Once upon a time,

  a boy named Erichthonius was born

  without a mother. Apollo hid the child

  in a woven basket of the Attic kind,

  and ordered the three virgin daughters

  of the monster Cecrops to watch over him,

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  and not to take a peek inside the basket.

  “Concealed within an elm tree’s greenery,

  I spied on them to see what they would do;

  two of the sisters, Pandrosos and Herse,

  were careful, honest watchers—but the third,

  Aglauros, called the other sisters cowards,

  and opened up the basket to peek in:

  she saw the infant stretched beside a serpent.

  “I carried my report back to the goddess,

  expecting a reward, but for my troubles

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  I was deposed as Minerva’s favorite,

  and—even worse—demoted to a rank

  below that of the noxious bird of nighttime!

  “All birds should be reminded by my loss

  not to seek trouble by loquacity,

  and not to bring bad tidings to the boss.

  “Perhaps you’ll say she did not seek me out

  as her companion, of her own accord,

  when I had no such notion in my mind.

  Why don’t you go and ask the goddess? She

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  may still be angry, but she won’t deny it.

  “For I was not always as you see me now;

  the land of Phocis was my place of birth,

  my father was the famous Coroneus,

  as everyone knows; and, as a princess, I

  was wooed by many wealthy noblemen.

  “My beauty was my ruin, for, one day,

  while I was promenading on the beach

  as usual, Neptune, god of the sea,

  saw me and right away grew passionate;

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  when prayers and blandishments proved wasted time,

  he chased me, threatening to force the issue.

  “I called upon the gods and men for aid,

  but no one was around to hear my cries;

  a virgin’s plight aroused the virgin goddess

  and she delivered me: I stretched my arms out

  and they began to darken with pinfeathers;

  I tried to tear the clothing from my shoulders

  but it was feathered, rooted in my skin;

  I strove to beat my bare breast with my hands,

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  but found that I had neither hands nor breasts.

  I tried to run but now I glided over

  the unrestraining surface of the sand,

  and soon I soared aloft, high in the air,

  and then was given to Minerva as

  her chaste companion.

  “What good does that do me,

  if someone who was turned into a bird

  to punish her for her appalling crimes—

  I mean Nyctimene—now takes my place?

  “Or have you somehow managed not to hear

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  the story that is famous everywhere,

  throughout all Lesbos—how Nyctimene

  outraged the honor of her father’s bed?

  “Although a bird now, she still feels her guilt

  and flees the sight of men and light of day,

  concealing shame in darkness, driven out

  of the clear sky by all the other birds.”

  “We spurn your foolish omens,” said the raven.

  “May all your efforts to arrest my flight

  redound upon you!” Onward raven flew

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  and told his master he had seen Coronis

  lie with a young Thessalian.

  When Apollo heard

  the accusation brought against his lover,

  the laurel resting on his brow slipped down;

  in not as much time as it takes to tell,

  his face, his lyre, his high color fell!

  Swelling with rage, he seized his customary

  weapon and bent it toward him from the tips;

  then his inexorable arrow flew

  into that breast so often pressed to his.

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  Coronis groaned, and when the arrowhead

  was drawn out, her white limbs were drenched in gore:

  “O Phoebus, I deserved your punishment,”

  she said. “But not before I’d given birth—

  for now another perishes with me.”

  And with her blood, the life poured out of her;

  soon, with its spirit gone, her body lay

  frigid in death.

  Now he is sorry for

  his cruel punishment, belatedly,

  and hates himself for what he listened to,

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  and for his furious response to it:

  he hates the bird who forced him into this,

  the cause both of his crime and of his grief;

  he hates the hand and bow, and with the hand,

  he hates his thoughtless arrows for good measure;

  he strokes the fallen girl, too late, and tries

  to overcome her fate: too late again,

  for his attempt to bring her back to life

  through the arts of medicine are all for naught.

  Now when he saw that these had no effect,

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  and that her funeral pyre was prepared

  for the flames that would soon shrivel up her limbs,

  the groans (for the immortal gods, you see,

  are not permitted tears upon their cheeks)

  from deep within him came, not unlike those

  a young cow utters when she sees the hammer

  come crashing down into the rounded skull

  of her own suckling calf. The deity

  pours fragrance on her unresponsive breast,

  embraces her one last time and performs,

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  improperly, rites proper to the dead.

  But Phoebus could not bear for his own seed

  to perish in those flames—and so he ripped

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sp; the unborn child out of its mother’s womb

  and brought it to the centaur Chiron’s cave;

  and raven, who had hoped to be rewarded

  for his truth-telling was prohibited

  from taking his old place among white birds.

  The prophecies of Ocyrhoë

  Meanwhile, the centaur was rejoicing in

  his foster child’s immortal lineage,

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  delighted by the thought of raising him,

  an onorous, yet honorable task,

  when look—here comes the centaur’s human daughter,

  distinguished by her shoulder-length red hair,

  and named Ocyrhoë, for the swift stream

  upon whose banks the naiad Chariclo

  gave birth to her: besides her father’s arts,

  she learned how to foretell fate’s mysteries.

  And so, when the prophetic fit came on her,

  and a god’s fire burned within her breast,

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  she looked upon that infant and she said,

  “Grow up, Boychild, bringer of good health

  to the whole world! The sick will often be

  indebted to you, and you will be permitted

  to bring back spirits who were snatched away,

  once and once only: for when you attempt

  to bring the dead to life a second time

  in spite of heaven, you will be halted by

  a lightning bolt from your grandfather Jove.

  “No longer godlike in your power then,

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  but a lifeless corpse until changed yet again—

  into a real god now, and so your fate

  will be renewed for yet a second time.

  “You, father dear, who are immortal too,

  destined from birth to live on earth forever,

  will beg the gods to be allowed to die,

  when the foul Hydra’s blood has poisoned you;

  heaven will finally permit your death,

  and the three goddesses will snap the thread.”

  Still other fortunes waited to be told,

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  but with a deep sigh and flowing tears, she said,

  “The fate that changes me prohibits speech,

  and makes my own voice inaccessible.

  Those arts by which I have earned heaven’s wrath

  are scarcely worth the price I pay for them!

  —I’d rather not know what the future holds!

  It seems my human form is being taken:

  the thought of grass for dinner pleases me,

  and open fields, where I can freely ride

  as I become my relative—a mare!

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  Whole horse? But why? My father is but a centaur!”

  Her whining, waning, becomes whinnying,

  as mind and speech both grow confused together,

  and for a moment seemed a sound between

  the noise a horse makes and a human word,

  more like someone who imitates a horse,

  before the sound turned clearly into neighing,