I must be dreaming. Alas, through
every dream, like pain through
anesthesia, a torturous
reality shows up.
A burning taste of jealousy.
A blind deaf muteness of
lust… I think I’d better add more
rosemary in the roast.
Procne, daughter of the king of Athens, is a figure in Greek mythology. She found out that her husband, the king of Fokida, Tereus, violated her sister, Philomela, and ripped out her tongue to hide his crime. Angry Procne killed her son from Tereus and fed the husband his meat. Zeus turned Philomela into swallow, Procne — into nightingale and Tereus — into hoopoe.
Blessed be the hour when angels
shake my filth off their wings.
The night was a garden of eyes*.
Luckily, days are blind.
Mute with the sinful obsession,
deaf to the call of blood,
I look forward to the next night
coming, burning with shame.
* “The Blue Bouquet” by Octavio Paz.
Philomela, daughter of the king of Athens, is a figure in Greek mythology. She was visiting her sister, Procne, wife of the king of Fokida, Tereus. Tereus violated Philomela and ripped out her tongue to hide his crime. Angry Procne killed her son from Tereus and fed the husband his meat. Zeus turned Philomela into swallow, Procne — into nightingale and Tereus — into hoopoe.
25.08.2019
Choose An Octavio Paz Line Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: nette onclaud
Syllables Per Line: 8 6 8 6 0 8 6 8 6
have you ever heard a song
sung pitifully by a tongue-less nightingale
vomiting blood on a treetop bathed in the moonlight
the soft sound softer than the moonlight
the clear sound clearer than the early morning dew;
even constantly chattering water pauses for a moment
to listen her enchanting song more attractive than the sirens’
she was once roaming around the sky above Leibethra at night,
she sang a requiem with her flawless clear voice
calling and gathering to comfort the soul
that was torn to pieces and dumped in a river,
now she is trying to tell her bitter and resentful story,
and how her tongue was cut off but with her hoarse voice;
it’s unintelligible like Cassandra’s prophesy, an entangled skein of thread never able to undo, it sounds hollow like an echo from mouth of a cave that can never be understood
the nightingale’s low moan of despair
is the scar that never goes away, and when this scar
becomes a terrible pain. unbearable, the nightingale,
as if moonlight covering a passing cloud, flies away
abandoning the branch
Note. Nightingale: Philomela
O fair lark who first sang with
Much summery mirth
She casts her gaze upon
Fresh pastures and dark waters
O sweet lark,
What see you in bright dawn light?
By day the mockingbird entertains
thoughts of freedom
Her throat holds caricatures of
joyful songs
O mockingbird,
Whose hymns do thy warble
In the noontide fair?
By the afternoon crows gather
to witness a murder
feast on the bones of their lovers
O thy villainous creatures
To whom do you confess your sins
in the milky twilight?
O beautiful philomel,
O love, by night fall
her song falls on deaf ears
She cringes as the cold sets in
O fair philomel, where are you
in the dusty hallows of the eve?
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philomel - old poetic term for nightingale, from the myth of Philomela who is raped/abused. * Female nightingales do not sing.
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