Part 27 (1/2)

CHORUS.

I have opened the closed road Between the living and the dead To make the right road clear to you.

I am the voice of Hercules now.

Here on earth my labours were The stepping stones to upper air.

Lives that suffer and come right Are backlit by immortal light.

Go, Philoctetes, with this boy, Go and be cured and capture Troy.

Asclepius will make you whole, Relieve your body and your soul.

Go, with your bow. Conclude the sore And cruel stalemate of our war.

Win by fair combat. But know to shun Reprisal killings when that's done.

Then take just spoils and sail at last Out of the bad dream of your past.

Make sacrifice. Burn spoils to me.

Shoot arrows in my memory.

But when the city's being sacked Preserve the shrines. Show G.o.ds respect.

Reverence for G.o.ds survives Our individual mortal lives.

V.

CHORUS.

Now it's high watermark And floodtide in the heart And time to go.

The sea-nymphs in the spray Will be the chorus now.

What's left to say?

Suspect too much sweet talk But never close your mind.

It was a fortunate wind That blew me here. I leave Half-ready to believe That a crippled trust might walk And the half-true rhyme is love.

from SEEING THINGS (1991)

The Golden Bough

(from Virgil, Aeneid, Book VI)

Aeneas was praying and holding on the altar

When the prophetess started to speak: 'Blood relation of G.o.ds, Trojan, son of Anchises, the way down to Avernus is easy.

Day and night black Pluto's door stands open.

But to retrace your steps and get back to upper air, This is the real task and the real undertaking.

A few have been able to do it, sons of the G.o.ds Favoured by Jupiter Justus, or exalted to heaven In a blaze of heroic glory. Forests spread half-way down And Cocytus winds through the dark, licking its banks.

Still, if love torments you so much and you so much desire To sail the Stygian lake twice and twice to inspect The underworld dark, if you must go beyond what's permitted, Understand what you must do beforehand.

Hidden in the thick of a tree is a bough made of gold And its leaves and pliable twigs are made of it too.

It is sacred to underworld Juno, who is its patron, And overtopped by a grove where deep shadows ma.s.s Along far wooded valleys. No one is ever permitted To go down into earth's hidden places unless he has first Plucked this golden-fledged tree-branch out of its tree And bestowed it on fair Proserpina, to whom it belongs By decree, her own special gift. And when it is plucked A second one grows in its place, golden once more, And the foliage growing upon it glimmers the same.

Therefore look up and search deep and when you have found it Take hold of it boldly and duly. If fate has called you The bough will come away easily, of its own sweet accord.

Otherwise, no matter how much strength you muster, you won't Ever manage to quell it or fell it with the toughest of blades.'

Markings

I.

We marked the pitch: four jackets for four goalposts, That was all. The corners and the squares Were there like longitude and lat.i.tude Under the b.u.mpy ground, to be Agreed about or disagreed about When the time came. And then we picked the teams And crossed the line our called names drew between us.

Youngsters shouting their heads off in a field As the light died and they kept on playing Because by then they were playing in their heads And the actual kicked ball came to them Like a dream heaviness, and their own hard Breathing in the dark and skids on gra.s.s Sounded like effort in another world ...

It was quick and constant, a game that never need Be played out. Some limit had been pa.s.sed, There was fleetness, furtherance, untiredness In time that was extra, unforeseen and free.

II.