The Poor Bitch's Rock

A woman who lost everything she owns stands there by the waterfront where the waves beat upon the shore. The woman-transformed-***** is a prisoner of war being carried to the foreign land of an enemy general across the sea; she cries ceaselessly tears in her eyes for the unbearable sorrow, she barks fiercely in intolerable anger. In the eyes of the woman who gazes up the top of heaven from the bottom of the deepest sea. She sees the last images of her blood-stained husband, her dear sons and daughters, died in agony. For her husband, she shared everything she owned; for her children, she cradled and lulled them in her bosom to raise— except for one son who was abandoned in the field at the time of his infancy because of an oracular ill omen. All these sorrows are unwanted bitter memories to recall, crueler than the cruelest fate for a woman to undergo. Now, she climbs higher up the mast to appeal to her deep inner heart’s mortification; to let others see her transmuted figure, an ugly *****, her annoying bark reaches to the furthest point of the sea. Is Amphitrite heard her heartrending cry? For the ship lists by the billow Poseidon rises, alas, but then, she loses her balance and falls to the deck vomiting blood, she ends her pathetic life; this *****’s resentment tossed by the raging waves, at the end, was thrown upon the shore and became a standing rock. The rock beckons the ships that pass the straits to tell her grudge, but to the heedless seafarers’ ears it sounds like the mere surges that come and hit the rock. However, at times, it sounds in their ears, like a ***** barking feebly from her bleeding heart because of all her puppies are taken away; that’s why, legend says, the sailors called this rock “the poor *****’s rock.”