17 XII 2001 - 17:50 - verba6

This is perhaps to be a free response to the Alchera assignment for Dec. 2001. If I'm not taken on, it's not too much of a worry - we'll call this a convenient tie-in to the sections of the Aeneid which I've read, focusing - well, on Ganymede and Juno, really, and taken at some future time.

Now that it's over, I see it should have been nothing to me. Now:

wizened
shrunken
but a reflection of what I was

No mortals bend before my altars, hope to sway me with their vows, hope that I listen: that passed long ago. And now, with silence as companion, I sit alone, alone among the gods not having the power to reshape myself to fit a changed world

that upstart nazarene ruined it for all of us

i wanted him gone but the others said nay

and I can think about old rages, old deeds, what I sent Aeneas through, and unfortunate Io and Leto: the old fires have gone out, there is no bile in their names for me.

And what was it to me if, on occasion, Ganymede would share the bed of mighty Jupiter? Let my husband have his whoring Trojan swineherd; I always knew he'd be back with me at the end. And yet...

And yet I was jealous: thoughts would not allow me to rest

he never snatched you with that same desire

he has something you haven't got

he is but a boy, and you a goddess

and my fingers burned to act.

And still I waited, and for still more nights did Jupiter take Ganymede to his bed, and reward his father with rich gifts of horses, and all for the glory of Troy, Troy, Troy, all for what Jupiter wanted and all for those desires of his that I could never hope to understand and all to satisfy the ache in his groin. Oh yes, I understood that well enough. And in return for such patience I as a reward received - nothing, not a thing before my altars, before my temples, for my cities, for me. No, it all went for him, for his pleasure.

whispers in the night
and nothing is what you've ended with

Perhaps I can still feel.

only rage was ever truly yours

And then he had the gall to replace Hebe, my own daughter, with that Trojan, whose image even still will haunt my dreams, whose lithe form can still dance

only for Jupiter, always for Jupiter

and, ah, it was easy to understand what spell had been cast, not one of Cupid but one of simple eros and still I loathed him for it.

wasn't i enough...?

And with that clarity my fuel was rage, burning so clear and fierce that even Jupiter wondered at it. He thought I was incensed by Aeneas, by the judgment of Paris Aeneas's kinsman, that my vanity had been wounded.

He was wrong.

in ganymede i found my worst enemy

civility is generally required at the banquets of the gods

one slight can carry only so much weight when one deeper has gone before

And he wondered again why I was so eager to release my anger when he offered me Italy as a prize, a place which would esteem me, but not before destroying Carthage which was so dear to me with its horse-head and its proud queen, unlucky in love, so much like me -

always taking more than you give, isn't that the way of it, husband mine

And it should have been long over, this rage, this hurt, and yet I find that instead of dropping to a gentle end it only cuts deeper with time, that instead of finding new things to worry about my mind always comes back to the same thing

so many years

never so much for me

never so much desirepassionneed

and I weep after all these years.

And: alone among the Olympians I had to commerce with the Eastern gods, humble myself before them who would show me a way to continue

even if you are too inflexible to adapt: this, with a superior smile

and perhaps transmigrate until I was passed on, borne through tides of peoples we never imagined to exist

and my memories consume the girl's, and we are one and she cries out with the pain of it

and I wonder how I never saw my place at my lord Jupiter's feet

always dropping me for whatever caught his eye

and always truth, glimpsed through a shattering of the mortal mind

can't handle

and I sit, alone with silence and my memory...