Orr - Orpheus & Eurydice: a Lyric Sequence

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Note to the Reader Copper Canyon Press encourages you to calibrate your settings by using the line of characters below, which optimizes the line length and character size: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur Please take the time to adjust the size of the text on your viewer so that the line of characters above appears on one line, if possible. When this text appears on one line on your device, the resulting settings will most accurately reproduce the layout of the text on the page and the line length intended by the author. Viewing the title at a higher than optimal text size or on a device too small to accommodate the lines in the text will cause the reading experience to be altered considerably; single lines of some poems will be displayed as multiple lines of text. If this occurs, the turn of the line will be marked with a shallow indent. Thank you. This e-book edition was created through a special grant provided by the Paul G. This e-book edition was created through a special grant provided by the Paul G.

Allen Family Foundation. Copper Canyon Press would like to thank Constellation Digital Services for their partnership in making this e-book possible. How can I celebrate love, now that I know what it does?

The Entrance to the Underworld

A common enough mistake:looking in the wrong place.Its not a fissurein the earth, or crackin a cliff facethat leads sharply down.You were looking in the wrongworld. It was insideyou entranceto that caverndeeper than hell,more dark and lonely.Didnt you feel it openat her first touch?

When I first saw

When I first saw her she was so beautiful I wanted to be a mirror and hold all of her. My eyes couldnt do that, much as I tried to calm them, saying: Drink deep of her face. If I had become a lake A mirror is all surface but a lake has depths.

Is this what

EURYDICE Is this what its like to be born: to be torn asunder? My green leaves burn, pale and splintered inner wood; deep cleft lightning made.

Weve come

ORPHEUS Calm now, curled away from each other, backs just touching, weve come full circle to that awkward primordial creature: man and woman as a single animal joined at the base of the spine.

In the Meadow

EURYDICE Marble pillars of palace or temple so what? Ive seen them tumbled by vines.

In the Meadow

EURYDICE Marble pillars of palace or temple so what? Ive seen them tumbled by vines.

And our beautiful bodies how long will they last? Shallow valley where we lie down, crushing a circle in tall grass. Above it the gods drift on low clouds, letting down bright lines of sunlight with tiny golden hooks.

In my dream

In my dream, she was tired and lay down at the foot of the hill. I climbed on, eager to walk in the summits wind-tossed grasses that blazed up in last light. But when I got there, the sun was gone and the wind so cold it seemed to blow right through me.

A snake

DEATH OF EURYDICE A snake no bigger than a bracelet of braided gold unfastened and cast aside in the haste of love The bite itself only the pinprick you might feel stepping barefoot on the open clasp.

His Lament

How is it she lies here, her body still so warm it makes me wince? How is it shes nothing now? They say theres a god who can squeeze mud in his fist breathe on it and it lives.

His Lament

How is it she lies here, her body still so warm it makes me wince? How is it shes nothing now? They say theres a god who can squeeze mud in his fist breathe on it and it lives.

And me? All I do is kneel beside her corpse, numbly repeating her name as if some nacreous alchemy of the voice could pearl a piece of dust.

Loss

Loss more than leaves fallen, more than green gone. Loss past grieving. Though roots probe and branches grope outward into empty air, shes vanished past finding, whose loss is carved in bark, in bone.

If

If your gaze takes inthe world,a persons a puny thing.If a person is allyou see,the rest falls awayand she becomes the world.But theres another worldinto which a personcan disappear.Then what remains?Only your word for her:Eurydice.

When I was alive

EURYDICE When I was alive only glimpses, moments of bliss but always the body resisting, refusing to let the soul go. In that world I was a fish too eager to enter the nets; here, Im a river.

There, I was a bird hopelessly searching for its nest; here, Im a wind that blows where it wishes and needs no rest. When I died, all Orpheus heard was a small, ambiguous cry. How could he know how free I felt as I unwound the long bandage of my skin and stepped out?

She paused

On the path down, she paused at the stone gates and saw a story like hers carved there: the child Persephone, fleeing the dark god, stumbles. Her heads thrown back, its sunburst of curls a golden chrysanthemum snapped from its stalk. Even as she falls a crack appears beneath her feet.

Orpheus Descending

Before we lay together in the fragrant grass I was only half alive.

Orpheus Descending

Before we lay together in the fragrant grass I was only half alive.

A frost came and scythed the whole field flat. Maybe she loved me, maybe not who knows? Not even the gods can see into a human heart its that dark. But mine beats its syllables of need and I begin my journey with no thought but this: Im lost, lost, unless I bring her back.

I was moving

I was moving down the bank toward the boat, lost in the mob of newly dead, when scowling Charon stepped from the mist to grab me by my shoulder: Youll go no farther till youre dead. I thought: Whats music to a brute like this, and yet the chord I struck hit him like a blow. His face softened.

He sat down right there in the stinking mud, chin propped on fists, listening.

When Eurydice saw him

When Eurydice saw him huddled in a thick cloak, she should have known he was alive, the way he shivered beneath its useless folds. But what she saw was the usual: a stranger confused in a new world. And when she touched him on the shoulder, it was nothing personal, a kindness he misunderstood. To guide someone through the halls of hell is not the same as love.

Look, they descend

PERSEPHONES SONG OF WELCOME Look, they descend: light, water, all things released seek the earth.

Why should you resist so insistently? Pushing away with each step, you only postpone. All things go downward. Even the rocks settle and sink, even the flowers bow.

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