Eurydice's Reasons

Eurydice’s Reasons

[Eurydice was the woman beloved of Orpheus, a man who sang so beautifully that wild beasts stopped to listen. When she was killed by a poisonous snake, Orpheus went down to the underworld to bring Eurydice back from the dead. He sang his way in, subduing all in the realm of death with his music. Eurydice was released, but could only live again if Orpheus did not look back at her as she walked behind him to the surface. He succumbed to temptation, and she fell back to dwell among the dead. So caught up in singing his fresh grief was Orpheus that he was torn apart by a roving band of wild women who wanted him to join their revels, but to whom he would pay no response.]



He sang, and my shape would shift. Wondrous varmints I became, not a one of them my own choice. I was glad to be rid of him, glad to be shut of Good Friend Orpheus.
A serpent he made of me, often—a dancer snake, with scales like rubies and pearls and pieces of gold. Usually I’d been sitting somewhere—soaking in a pool of quiet-- hearkening to the hum of a pomegranate’s taciturn red or a morning-glory’s paradoxical midnight of purple. And then and there he’d bust right in on me, smacking at those lyre-strings, and so a-slithering then I must go.
Of all the listening beasts of the forest--so funny, isn’t it, that he made me the deafest one—the snake, alive like a gut-string only to all his vibes.
O, such a grinning fool he could be when he did it. Only the music could I love, never him. The trembling of air I adored, not ever his hands. For his part, he claimed to love me madly. I do believe that he did, but only because he knew I could hear things—things like a pomegranate’s red—that he, Mr. Lord High Golden Singing Ass, could not. Maybe that’s why he kept turning me into a snake while I was trying to listen to that which he could never hear.
So, did I get myself killed on purpose? Maybe.
That last day of mine, I had had to be his black swan. I’d made the mistake of mentioning that I wondered what it was like to fly, and he realized that no, I had never been a bird. I tried to beg off (Gee, look at what time it’s getting to be!) but he was already singing. My nightfluid body flowed off into the skies, my new feathers thirsting for upper air. I almost died right then, for my swan-self flew too high beyond his voice.
Revert I did, and fell.
I did make it down all right, barely. Once my woman’s flat feet were splayed on ground, though the dizziness I tried to walk. He sat, still strumming his lyre, and gazed at me as blank and bland as a leopard, or the moon.
I swung down to earth to find where I was about to plant a foot, and beheld it setting down—so slowly, and yet so like a rock—upon a black-and-emerald snake who slid uncomprehending through golden ferns.
I know I could have stopped that foot.
Lightning struck my bones. My hands became as numb and ripe as fruit. But then my mind awoke and I became the color of night.
His bawling voice--like sundown--receded. A jewel-black shadow now was I, and fine. And I hit the trail that led out of the sun’s old flat dirt-noisy town. Goodbye, Helios. Always so bloody loud, you.
Below my feet then, only flow. Black water like sweet wine. Boat? A membrane barely between, barely even there. The old beard leaning on the rudder winked and lounged like a grape-laden vine.
I was assigned to the dim Fields of Asphodel, which suited me just fine. I of course had died with no sin dramatic enough to activate Tartarus’ jaws. I probably could have dropped Orpheus’ name and sneaked into the glare of Elysium, that private club of the heroic dead--but one cock of my ear at that gateway told me I didn’t want to have to hear Odysseus’ war stories repeated across as long as the Underworld could last.
Glad I was of the horizonless Fields, of their dark moist rocks and their silly sweet pink flowers. Glad was I of the other light midnight shades. We had nothing to live for; we did nothing but laugh.
Nothing from above ever bothered with those fields except the happy bats. They loved to swoop down there, even more so after I came. I could hear them sing, and we made songs together. Such Joy, but by their visits—gone by day, and there by night—by them I knew the Aboveworld’s tight clock.
And so even in those dark light Fields I felt the weight of Orpheus’ love. My shady cohorts did not approve. They cried, “Wild Honey, Wild Honey! Do set down that big gold hunk!”
I’d smooth myself then, looking for said hunk, as I might have searched for a clinging spider in my former daylight world. But no location could I find that had any weight.
When Orpheus arrived like dawn’s brass band amid the trickling, flowering rocks, I was happy, somewhat.
Certainly, when I heard my fate I was stoked for the journey--after all, none of my vast Crewe had ever stepped up from our dark before. And forgive me, Orpheus was Alive. And Life has its jewelfruit burn, ever—ever for our flesh of Night.
Anyway, the Judge-boys had spoken. And Queen and King Dark had agreed.

They let us go, we two alone. As some tell it, Hermes went with us; but that is not so. The word had been pronounced, the conditions set. There was no need for Hermes (he was behind, flirting with one of the dark rive-nymphs of the Styx). It was just us two.
Remembering the earth, the flavor of meat, the narcotic yellow apples of the summer sun, I walked with hope. Perhaps flesh would be good again.
And then Orpheus began to spout.
He never could get anything done without a song for a cadence. And so he sang to me, promising such serpent scales as I had never known. The beautiful one who had killed me, even that one would be as in love with me as Orpheus was.
On and on he went. As I trod behind him, I prayed that he would fail. I do not know to whom I prayed; perhaps I prayed to him.
But no sound could I make, no footfall, not even a stone could I dislodge. No distraction was I.
But bats were winging overhead, my friends the bats with their unheard songs. They knew me, and sang the songs that with them I’d made; and I opened my non-mouth, and I too sang.
I saw him twitch. His stride was beginning to falter.
I sang,
I sang out,
I sang and saw him turn.
Bye-bye, I waved.
Hermes, half-dressed and wet and erect and irritated, came and got me by the scruff.

Song Orpheus craved,
Far more than he ever craved me.
I gave song that he could never sing,
And all his plans I wrecked.
Because of my voice,
He could not stop himself from looking back—
At that moment, with him I finally fell in love.

I’m sorry about what happened to him thereafter. But he did take on so.
He cried too much, so much that his head was clean torn away.
For me did he cry? Baby, myself I don’t kid ‘bout that.

Down the river bobbed his head,
Down the river it bobbed like a Halloween fruit—
Till the river poured into the Styx.
On the shore, his body trotted faithfully behind, good only for carrying the lyre it had forgotten how to play
But which still played nonetheless.
At last he met me, among the foggy asphodels and rocks.
Out of the mist I conjured a mantle
And laid it across a smooth stone that he might sit.
All my rowdy Crewe I shooed away.

Quietly he came.
He set down his obedient lyre, and touched it not.
He sat, and leaned forward; out to me he held his head.
Now he listened.
Now could he hear.