Heaney Seamus - The midnight verdict

She was gone. Orpheus mourned her in the world above, Raving and astray, until his love Compelled him down among the very shades. He dared to venture on the Stygian roads Among those shadow people, the many, many Ghosts of the dead, to find Persephone And the lord who rules the dismal land of Hades; Then plucked the lyre-gut for its melodies And sang in harmony: O founded powers Who rule the underearth, this life of ours, This mortal life we live in upper air Will be returned to you. To you, therefore, We may speak the whole truth and speak it out As I do now, directly: I have not Transgressed your gloomy borders just to see The sights of Tartarus, nor to tie all three Of the three-necked monsters snake-snarled necks in one. I crossed into your jurisdiction Because my wife is here. The snake she stepped on Poisoned her and cut her off too soon And though I have tried to suffer on my own And outlive loss, in the end Love won.

Whether or not you underpowers feel The force of this god, Love, I cannot tell, But surely he prevails down here as well Unless that ancient story about hell And its lord and a ravaged girls not true. Was it not Love that bound the two of you? I pray you, therefore, by the extent of these Scaresome voids and mist-veiled silences, Unweave the woven fate Eurydice Endured too soon. All of humanity Is in your power, your kingdom is our home. We may put off the day but it will come. Sooner or later, the last house on the road Will be this immemorial abode. This is the throne-room of the universe.

Allow Eurydice her unlived years And when she will have lived them, shell be yours Inalienably. I desire on sufferance And want my wife. But if the fates pronounce Against this privilege, then you can take Credit for two deaths. I shall not go back. As Orpheus played and pleaded, the bodiless Hordes of the dead wept for him. Tantalus Was so bewitched he let the next wave fill And fall without reaching.

Ixions wheel Stood spellbound. The vultures beaks held off Above Tityos liver. The obsessive Water-riddlers heard and did not move. And Sisyphus, you dozed upon your rock Which stood dazed also. A tear then wet the cheek Of each of the Eumenides, the one And only time: song had made them human And made the lord of Hades and his lady Relent as well. They called Eurydice Who limped out from among the newly dead As eager as the day when shed been wed To Orpheus.

But there was one term set: Until he left Avernus, he was not To look back, or the gift would be in vain. They took the pathway up a steep incline That kept on rising higher, through a grim Silence and thick mist, and they had come Close to the rim of earth when Orpheus Anxious for her, wild to see her face Turned his head to look and she was gone Immediately, forever, back and down. He reached his arms out, desperate to hold And be held on to, but his arms just filled With insubstantial air. She died again, Bridal and doomed, but still did not complain Against her husband as indeed how could she Complain about being loved so totally? Instead, as she slipped away, she called out dear And desperate farewells he strained to hear. The second death stunned Orpheus. He stood Disconsolate, beyond himself, dumbfounded Like the man who turned to stone because hed seen Hercules lead Cerberus on a chain Leashed to his middle neck; or like that pair Petrified to two rocks underwater In the riverlands of Ida Olenos And Lethea, uxorious sinners.

Pleading and pleading to be let across The Styx again, he sat for seven days Fasting and filthy on the bank, but Charon Would not allow it. So he travelled on Accusing the cruel gods until he found A way back to his mountainous home ground In Rhodope. The sun passed through the house Of Pisces three times then, and Orpheus Withdrew and turned away from loving women Perhaps because there only could be one Eurydice, or because the shock of loss Had changed his very nature. Nonetheless, Many women loved him and, denied Or not, adored. But now the only bride For Orpheus was going to be a boy And Thracians learned from him, who still enjoy Plucking those spring flowers bright and early.