“Orpheus” (Conclusion) by Benjamin Baxter

III

Behind the man a specter is seen
She is his wife, his lover, his queen.
Her spirit glooms the granite scene:
In life’s realm she was not on lien.
In life, beauty was her greatest claim
She doubts that she is much the same.
Phantom, flowing locks follow her path
As she follows a hopeless wrath.
His wrath is soon seen by the shade
As a shroud in a masquerade.
He envelops despair, having weighed
Heavily as a leaden cascade.

Before the wraith herself had died
She had been the rose-cheeked bride
Of a man whose music rang out loud;
The sound of his grasps dreams avowed.
This dreaming would have never ceased
Were it not for a clamor from the east.
A great din rose towards the wedding feast
As the heavens borne a fearsome beast.
The Sky-Beast fed upon the maiden’s flesh
Raw and tender, the tendons fresh.
Though she had died a final end
It seems he too would soon descend.

The winged creatures know that within an hour
They will have another course to devour.

IV

We find our groom enduring pain
Of stinging agony, arcane strain.
Knowing only doubtful disdain,
He seeks love to return mundane.
His mundane wish for she long dead
Is not only known by he ahead.
Eurydice has considered much:
A lyre knows song as merely such.
His lyre, a device: means to an end
“Instrument” only begins to transcend…
That meaning is one she would amend
To include as well: a man’s one friend.

And as they rose a sandstone stride,
She knew at once she must not hide.
She’d naught to gain from few new years
Besides an assortment of imbued fears,
Fears who gnaw with blackened teeth
Fearing that which lies beneath,
Fearing they who make a sheath
For avarice, lust, sloth, and grief.
In his lyre existed her frights
Of long and lonely moonless nights
Oblivion consuming souls
Which burns and scorches as were they coals.

The winged creatures could still see all of this
Though they were gorging in their horrible bliss.

“Orpheus”, Part I & II by Benjamin Baxter

Beyond the valley of or and vert
Lives the winged creatures, gliding on air.
In silken strands of glowing glare
They seek solace from the shadowed stair.
Extends this stair from life to death.
One descends it without one’s breath.
Withered trees, sky bleak and dark,
Barren land of death… but hark!
And hark! indeed to the sign of life
Cutting through like a subtle knife
From Milton’s fable of heav’nly strife …
… but this man hath only sought his wife.Climbs he now this stair of loss
His prize well worth the voyage across
Slinking sea and lifeless land
With constant thought of his maiden’s hand.
Of this hand in icy death’s hold:
It was relinquished for a song so old.
He sang his song with a pleasure bold.
This the lesser task of they twofold.
Of the tasks of this twofold mandate
The second is that the man must wait
Until he is beyond the grip of hell,
Past the grimacing, deadly stairwell.
 
And the winged creatures take all of this in,
Feasting grimly on love, loss, song and sin.

II

Death allowed the woman to leave
As long as they can sightlessly grieve.
He knew for one to break Fate’s weave
One must cut with a blade naïve.
That bloodless blade with strength of twelve
Carves away sin of he that delves
Into Hades and back again;
Luckless in this are mortal men.
Fated this: men who try must fail.
By their own hubris they pierce the veil
And from it too, they return frail.
Tempting Fate tempts her assail. Clotho knows to spin the strand
That not even gods can command.
It shines as lines of lightless prism
Awaiting the oldest sister’s schism.
The second of three sees the line
And a length for even those divine.
Lachesis assesses this twine
Weaving all too tightly life’s design.
The design of Atropos’ assigned feat
Is to seek life’s end.  None can cheat.
This is the one truth continuing:
Avoiding life’s end is one’s undoing.This the winged creatures know as well;
They consume from fate of the mortal cell.(The poem concludes Saturday, March 29. Benjamin Baxter is a student teacher in California and blogs at Awaiting Tenure)