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Poetry
Styx
You
flatter me with rain, Eurus,
your
words are ginger
kisses
on my skin,
and
I am a woman
in
need of words and kisses,
but
not just words or kisses
You
said to me once (and your droplets
ached
and tingled):
“You,
first to stand up against the Titans,
firstborn
of three-thousand,
I
adore you, you are
a
goddess.”
And
I continued to sigh
as
your kisses sighed:
“Even
gods test themselves with your will.”
Women
and poets see
the
truth arrive,1
you foretold,
“You
are a goddess, a poet.”
Blessed
be the truth:
I
choose
who
among the gods
are
worthy, and who
will
die or turn
mute
by their word,
but
pleasure and speech
have
taken me into them
even
as I take them away,
(and
yes, your pleasure too,
and
your speech),
I
am a river.
Goddess-poet-river?
Had
I not also been
helper
to Zeus,
truth
to Hera,
life
to Achilles,
and
love to Narcissus?
mother
of four:
I
nourished
Strength,
Victory, Power,
Zeal
in my womb,
I
am a woman.
I
am not a blanket of hate.
Not
the basin of the underworld.
Nor
the bridge of death.
And
yet, lover,
you
withheld your gentle rains from me—
where
are you now?
Did
you remember
the
strong men, the gods
who
suffered
judgment,
muteness,
death,
and
those who endured
the
doom of endless wandering
by
my banks?
But I only remember
Heracles
and Orpheus
who
entered me
with
strength or through the loving
sadness
of song,
not
with the price
of
a proper death,
And
I remember you…
I
am a captive river,
tied
down across the centuries
by
oaths made and not made,
contained
in dams
of
intentions, promises, desires,
my
truth deciding death or life,
yet
wandering
far
from the Elysian Fields,
away
from gods’ and men’s
unimaginable
bliss
Now
I no longer wait for your words
or
kisses, not your cool, refreshing rains,
not
for you,
my
dear, smiling,
distant
Eurus.
I yearn for a storm.