The Wrecking Light (3 page)

Then the god began to toy with them.
Gazing out from the curving deck
across the ocean, feigning tears, he cried:
"These are not the shores you promised me,
these shores are not my home.
What glory is there when men
deceive a boy — so many against one?"
My tears were real, but the mutineers
just laughed at both of us and kept on rowing.

Now I swear to you by that god himself
— and there is no god nearer than him —
that this is true: that the ship just stopped.
It stood still on the sea as if in dry dock.
The panicked men pulled harder,
letting out sail to try and find the wind,
but ivy was swarming up the oars
twining tendrils round the blades,
whipping along the decks and up the mast,
dragging at the encumbered sails
till they sagged in heavy-berried clusters.
And now the god revealed himself at last.
Around his brow a garland of grapes;
in his hand a wand, tight-twisted with vine;
and at his feet, the slinking
phantom shapes of wild beasts:
tigers, lynxes, panthers.

Illusions, perhaps, but the crew began to leap
overboard, in terror or madness or both.
One body darkened and went black,
back lifting in a curve; another started to call out
just as his jaws spread wide, his nose hooked over,
his skin hardened into scales. Another, still
fumbling with an oar, looked down
and saw his hands shrinking till they were
hands no more, just fins.
And I watched one, reaching up for a rope, finding
he had no arms
and as he toppled over,
finding he had no legs either:
all torso, he back-flipped into the sea,
with a tail horned like a crescent moon.
They leapt on every side in showers of spray:
bursting free of the water, plunging down again
like dancers or tumblers turning through the air.

The only human left of twenty
I stood there shaking
till I heard the god speak out:
"Hold your nerve
and this empty ship
and track us down the coast to home!"
And so I did. And there I joined
his rites and sacrifices, and now I follow him:
Iacchus, Bromius, Liber, Dionysus.'

'Well,' said Pentheus, 'I have listened patiently
to this rambling fantasy of yours:
an attempt, no doubt, to diminish my anger
and delay your punishment. Well, it didn't work.
Take him, men, and break him on the rack.
Send him down to Hell.'
And so Acoetes was dragged away
to the cells; but while the fire, the steel,
the instruments of pain, were being prepared
the studded doors flew open of their own accord
and the forged chains fell from his hands.

Hearing this — not trusting anyone now —
Pentheus stood and went
to settle things, once and for all.
Alone, he clambered up Cithaeron, the mountain
chosen for these rites, now ringing
with the songs and chants of the maenads,
the celebrants of the god.
And he was stirred by them, roused like a warhorse
at the sound of battle trumpets, their
shiver in the air. The long cries
thrilling through him he pressed on:
skittish, fevered, feeling again
some passion in him flare.

Halfway up the mountainside,
surrounded by woods, was an open clearing.
Here he stood, in full view. Here he looked
upon the naked mysteries with uninitiated eyes.
The first to see him, the first
to rush at him, the first
to hurl her sharpened wand into his side,
was Agave, his mother,
screaming: 'Come, my sisters, quick!
There is a wild boar here we must kill!'
And the three sisters led the rest
and fell on him in frenzy,
and Pentheus the king was terrified, crying out,
confessing all his sins. Blood
streaming from a hundred wounds
he called to Autonoë: 'I am Pentheus!
Don't you know your own nephew?
Would you do to me
what the dogs did to Actaeon, your son?'
But the names meant nothing to her,
and she simply
tore his right arm out of its shoulder.
Her sister, Ino, wrenched off the other
like a pigeon's wing.
With no hands left to pray, no arms
to reach for his mother, he just said,
'Mother, look at me.'
And Agave looked, and howled, and shook
the hair from her face, and went to him
and took his head in her hands
and in a throb of rapture
twisted it, clean off.
In her bloody grip, the head swung
with its red strings: 'See,
my sisters: victory!'
And quicker than a winter wind strips
the last leaves from a tree,
so all the others ripped Pentheus to pieces
with their own bare hands.

By this lesson piety was learned,
and due reverence for the great god Dionysus,
for his rites, and for this holy mountain shrine.

The green leaf opens
and the leaf falls,

each breath is a flame
that gives in to fire;

and grief is the price
we pay for love,

and the death of love
the fee of all desire.

Son of Zeus, son of the thunderbolt,
Iacchus the twice-born, child
of the double door, Bromius
the roaring god, the coming one,
the vanishing one, the god
who stands apart; god of frenzy
and release, god of the vine.
The one
of many names and many faces.
xsxsThe horned god. Young
beyond time.
The god
that changes. The Other.
Dionysus.

***

And noise, just a lot of noise: drums,
cymbals, flutes — not even music — shouting
and screaming and dancing up the mountain
to kill some goat, no doubt. And all that blooming
ivy
'They say Mount Cithaeron flows with blood...

'Wine, more like.'

'They say the king has gone.
That when the women were done with their play
and finally laid him down
he must have been tired
for his head rolled away like a stone.'

'They're all drunk. I wouldn't believe a word.
Another false god turns up and off they go.
If that pretty boy's a son of Zeus, then I can fly.
Believe me, it will pass.
It's the priests I blame: whipping up this madness.
Our servant girls deserting their tasks —
their looms and basket-work — unbinding their hair
and putting on garlands, carrying those
spear things,
those fennel stalks tied up with vine leaves,
burning incense — and all of them dressed
in
animal skins,
for heaven's sake.
You won't catch me in some procession
up a mountain with a bunch of stupid girls
because a priest says we should celebrate a god.
Him and his so-called mysteries.
We are the daughters of Minyas
and we have our god — sweet Pallas Athena —
and we don't need a false idol, or his wine.
Let's pass the hours while we spin and weave
by telling stories, and by the time we're done
all will be quiet and everything back to normal.'

'Here's one. About how the mulberry changed
from white to red because of blood.
An Eastern story this, about the handsome Pyramus
and his neighbour, the beautiful Thisbe.
Separated by their parents, and a wall,
each night they kissed the stone that lay between.
They pledged to meet, after dark, by this tomb
with a mulberry bush nearby. Thisbe gets there first,
but is scared off by a lioness all bloody-mouthed
from some ghastly business. She escapes,
but drops her shawl, which the beast tears to pieces.
Then along comes Pyramus, finds the shawl
and thinks she's dead, so kills himself.
Blood everywhere. All over the bush.
Then Thisbe returns, of course, sees her loved one
lying dead, and kills herself. More blood,
and that's why mulberries are red.'

'Lovely
story, but a bit dull. No sex, at least,
for once; that's a relief.'

'Here's another. It tells how the Sun falls in love.
But before that, we hear how his light sees everything first:
in this case, brightening the bed where Ares lies
entertaining Aphrodite, wife of the fire-god Hephaestus...'

'Oh, the cripple? The donkey-rider?'

'The very same — but now
cuckold
too. And so Hephaestus —
who's good with his hands, if nothing else — fashions this
invisible net of bronze, finer than the finest spider's web,
and traps his wife and her lover in the very act.'

'Disgusting. And I suppose the other gods were watching?'

'Of course — which fuelled the shame
of Aphrodite, and stoked her vengeance.'

'Against her gimp of a husband — the blacksmith?'
'No, no: against
the Sun!
She makes him fall in love
with this virgin princess. He turns up in disguise, then
discloses himself to her — you know? And so,
overwhelmed by his radiance, his
magnificence,
she gives in. As you would.
But there's another girl who also loves the Sun,
and in her jealousy she tells the king,
who's so furious at his daughter's crime
he buries her alive.
The Sun, distraught, tries to save her, but to no avail.
"In spite of Fate," he says, "you'll still reach up to heaven,"
and sprinkles the ground with nectar. Up comes
this shrub of frankincense, stretching to the sky.
The other girl, meanwhile — the jealous one —
is changed into a tiny flower, doomed to turn her face
forever, following the sun.'

'Good. They got what they deserved.'

'Time for one more.
This is the story of the fountain pool whose waters
turn men's bodies soft as girls': home of the nymph
Salmacis, who wouldn't follow Artemis, who chose
the mirror and brush over the javelin and bow.
When a beautiful boy — almost a man — appears
at the pool, she's eaten up by desire and tries
to kiss him, but he's still too young to understand.
She retreats, watching him slip off his clothes and dive in.
Beside herself, she plunges after him, pulling
him under, taking him by force, and praying
to the gods that their bodies will never be parted.
And so it was, like two trees grafted,
they were made one — and that
one
was neither man nor woman: it was Hermaphroditus.
In his new voice he asked his parents,
Hermes and Aphrodite, to curse this pool forever,
so that any boy who swam in it would be unmanned.
And so it came to be.'

The daughters of Minyas sat in silence, then, for a while.

Eventually, they went back to their work:
taking their minds off the boy in the pool,
the gods in their bed; those mulberries.
They busied themselves with their weaving,
trying to forget what was going on
up on the mountain with all the other women
and their ridiculous prophet. Not wanting
to even think about it (the hard
young bodies and all those wet mouths
turning to feast) they kept their hands moving
and stayed very quiet.

A quiet that was torn open — that moment —
by shrieks, drumbeats, horns, bones
and bells and pipes, the bleating cries
of things unspeakable, the air dense and sweet
with saffron and myrrh; and then,
unbelievably, their weaving turned to green.
Their looms were sudden tents of ivy, twined
and looped with its emerald and jade, the curtains
swagged with fruit, drooping tapestries of vine —
their gold brocade and delicate laces
now swathed in budding creepers, blue-veined leaves.
Each thread became a tendril, their spools
and spindles tightening and thickening to stems,
festooned now with the dark red
flesh and weight of grapes.

The house shuddered into dusk
and all the oil-lamps flared up
and torches spat and smoked
in every room and all around them
grew the shapes and sounds of beasts.
Each sister shirked the light, flinching
from the flames into the deep shadows,
and as they scuttled in corners
a new skin started growing,
stretching from their withered arms
to their shrivelled feet, though they were
too busy flittering there
to notice.
But when they tried to speak their grief,
all that they heard was a tiny
high-pitched squeak.

No human can hear them now
where they hang, huddled in the rafters,
under the thatch.
Shunning our daylight
they flit only by night
and take their name
from the time that they appear:
the vesper bats.

None survived.
The platoon had forgotten
the fable of the patient fox, waiting
for the night's sudden
drop to zero.
A minute is all it takes
and the white lake is dotted in stars
already frozen red,
and the blown feathers of ducks.
Just their feet left
still standing there, webbed hard
into the trap-ice.

Here,
among the market vegetables,
this torpedo
from the ocean
depths,
a missile
that swam,
now
lying in front of me
dead

surrounded
by the earth's green froth
— these lettuces,
bunches of carrots.
Only you
lived through
the sea's truth, survived
the unknown, the
unfathomable
darkness, the depths
of the sea,
le grand abîme,
only you:
varnished
black-pitched
witness
to that deepest night.

Only you:
dark bullet
barrelled
from the depths,
carrying only
your one wound,
but renewed,
always resurgent,
locked into the current,
fins fletched
like wings
in the torrent,
in the coursing
of the underwater dark,
like a grieving arrow,
sea-javelin, a nerveless
oiled harpoon.

Dead
in front of me,
catafalqued king
of my own ocean;
once
sappy as a sprung fir
in the green turmoil,
once seed
to sea-quake,
tidal wave, now
simply
dead remains.

In the whole market
yours
was the only shape left
with purpose or direction
in this
jumbled ruin
of nature;
you are armed
amongst this greenery,
a solitary man of war,
your flanks and prow
black
and slippery
as if you were still
a well-oiled ship of the wind,
the only
true
machine
of the sea: unflawed,
undefiled,
navigating now
the waters of death.

He wanted to outlive the grim husbandry
of battle order, outrun
the breath of the damned, his sleeves
flecked with their spit, his sword with their dung;
to move beyond the hooks and eyes
of women, their insinuated blades, to pass
through the scrim of tissue, through this
chanonry of blood, to reach a place
of peace and honour, fresh running water,
a morning of porcelain and lavender
combed by light, folded and smoothed over.