“Orpheus the Coward”
I did not kill myself for love.
I didn’t tear apart my broken heart,
show its bloody pieces to the world
unless you count my music.
In that I laid myself bare,
my grief as exposed as an infant
left on a lonely hill
for beasts to feast upon.
I did not kill myself for love.
I didn’t choose to die,
to trap us both in that deep darkness,
breathe the earth above our heads
as we quake in Hades’s rich domain,
both doomed to finally drink
from that fatal river that makes us forget
each other.
I did not kill myself for love.
I chose to run to hell
to bring my love to life,
to calm the viscous demon-dog’s rage,
to bring salt tears to the icy cheeks
of Hades and his Queen,
to rescue my wife of a single day,
to bring her back to that same day’s sun.
I did not kill myself for love.
I chose to lead her back
from those cold depths,
feel her silent steps
behind me but never look to see.
The price of her freedom
my uncertainty.
But the Fates are bitches
that toy with human lives:
my feet touched earth,
yet still I looked back too soon.
She remained in darkness.
I lost her at the border
between life and death,
dark and light, fear and hope.
Her fading farewell,
as translucent as the hand
I reached for
but could not grab.
No second charm would work
on Hell’s cold denizens.
I did not kill myself for love.
I sat and thought and tried
to find a way through the fog
of my brain to win her back again.
None came, but as I struggled
to compose my next hopeless plan,
alone with my lyre,
just me and my pain,
I was torn apart,
my body as broken as my heart.
I did not kill myself for love,
but I was not sorry to go.
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Thank you for visiting my blog! The above poem was inspired by the Speech of Phaedrus in Plato’s Symposium in which Orpheus was dubbed a coward because he did not die for love like a more traditional hero.
Wherever you are, stay safe, stay well, and read often!
*Image courtesy of www.publicdomainpictures.net via Creative Commons License.
