Who Weeps, Who Weeps For Adonis?
Who weeps for the lion, whose golden curls tumble
To the ground? He is most fine and bound in rough hemp, he’s tied
To a table of stone, and will lie,
Death-quiet, through a dark night,
Beneath the stars.
Who weeps for Dumuzi on a throne of gold? Cast down
Into dust, the death of brightness,
He's dragged into the dark
For his wife.
Who weeps for Adonis whose ivory skin is sprawled and tainted
By a boar’s tusk? His purple lips and sunken eyes
Will make no kisses now.
Who weeps for the burning boy, staggering back
With a piece of mistletoe in his eye?
Who weeps? Who weeps for a beautiful youth, fallen
To the outraged shout of a gunshot?
Blood seeps into cracks in concrete
To nourish the mosses, like urine;
His waste, his discards, boxed up and planted
In a tidy garden, somewhere,
With a carved stone on it.
Who weeps for the man who trembles with cold?
Hunched and shivering, back to a dried up pine tree,
He's the sacrifice of a pig hunt gone wrong;
His blood soaks into parched ground,
Down to a red salt sea.
That pale youth has a new name:
Corpse-rot, worm-food; he’s swallowed up in earth now,
His body hung by Herself on a nail on the wall,
Gone into dust.
Have we paid teind enough?
Lord?
-- Stephanie Pegg, November 2005
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This is one of those highly referential jobs that are lots of fun to write, but are hard to understand by anyone who hasn't read exactly the same books as the poet. I'm not sorry, but I'll understand if my vict- er, readers don't really get this.
I wrote the first draft when I was studying for an exam on Classical Traditions in English Literature and had been fairly well steeped in the Venus and Adonis myth. So that's where it comes from, as much as anything else.
Cheers all,
Stephanie
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9 comments:
Excuse me, I need to do a Happy Dance.
(Babe was not to impressed - she was part of the Happy Dance.)
ENGL225 finally cracked (that's the Classical Traditions paper) and relased our grades.
A+ for Me! Woohoo! Much joy. :-D
(I was very dubious about the exam. I thought I had some good ideas but was very incoherent about expressing them.)
Steph
Hmmmm... I don't know if I'm getting the references you're intending, but it rings a whole load of mythological bells for me - from Adonis to Dumuzi (and no doubt Tammuz) to Baldur - slain consorts/sons/beautiful-youth-gods the lot...
"but it rings a whole load of mythological bells for me - from Adonis to Dumuzi (and no doubt Tammuz) to Baldur "
Very good. A chocolate fish for you! I think you're one of the people who's taste in reading is close enough to mine to understand the poem without needing glosses.
You missed an obvious reference, and several veiled ones. I'll give you a bounty of a choccie fish per obscure reference, and if you come up with any I hadn't thought of, I'll pretend that I did and appear to be more clever than I actually am. ;-)
Oh man, I gotta get me some of that! Chocolate fish per, you say?
The only thing I don't like about it is putting "Now" on its own line. It feels a bit gimmicky.
I was getting chills reading the last two stanzas ("Blood seeps into cracks, like urine... Who weeps for the man who trembles with cold").
I like the way the pighunting is not described prettily. You started off with the glorious lion and the golden throne, and then the gunshot drags us into the muck. The pighunt, one would expect, would be glorious again, but you let us see the sheer nastiness of the death. Good.
Very cool.
"The only thing I don't like about it is putting "Now" on its own line. It feels a bit gimmicky."
[grumble]Yeah, maybe you've got a point. I'll think about changing it.
The pig hunt reminds me of that scene from _The Fionavar Tapestry_, but I guess you're both drawing on the same taproot text...
That was amazing! Really liked the references - I didn't click to the Fionavar one until I read the comments, but I agree with it.
And I really liked the Aslan descriptions.
The Fionavar reference is actually John Fouhy making me look cleverer than I really am. I'd read the book but about 10 years ago, so it wasn't a deliberate analogy. But it still works, so thanks John. :-)
Steph
I caught the Aslan and Baldur references, and have also noticed in my own studies of literature that the sacrificed youth does seem to be a recurring theme all over the place, which usually ties into the changing of the seasons (particularly Baldur, in the examples you give here). Curious.
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