This was the legendary mine of human souls.
They went like silent flecks of silver ore,
a thin vein glinting through the dark. And in the dark,
amongst the tree roots twisting in the earth,
blood — human blood — flowed thickly and as red as porphyry.
But nothing else was red.
They passed beneath huge rocks and by deserted woods,
crossed bridges spanning empty chasms,
saw the vast expanse of blind, grey lake
suspended high above its bed,
like rain clouds shadowing a landscape.
There was a single path: a long, pale, wandering strip
laid down across the yielding quiet of the fields.
This was the way they took.
First came a slim man in a blue cloak.
He stared ahead, impatiently, in silence.
His paces were great bites torn from the path
and swallowed without chewing, while his hands
hung heavily amongst the creases of his gown,
no longer conscious that his lyre, as if ingrown,
clung lightly to his left hand
like the tendrils of a rose around an olive bough.
His senses seemed to have been split in two:
his sight outran him, as a dog will run,
then turn, return, run on again into the distance,
waiting at the next bend in the road;
his hearing, like a scent, stayed with the man.
Sometimes he fancied that it reached
as far back as the progress of those other two
who had to follow him throughout the long ascent.
But no: it was the echo of his footsteps only
and the air stirred by the passing of his cloak.
He told himself: They’re coming, surely.
He spoke the words out loud and heard them die away.
Surely they were coming; yet how desperately quiet was their tread.
Although he knew that if he let himself just once turn round,
the whole brave venture, nearly now accomplished,
would be ruined, yet he longed to look upon
the silent pair who travelled after him.
One was the god of far-flung distances,
the bright-eyed messenger, now hooded for the journey,
who held his slender staff before him
and whose wings were beating at his ankles.
And the other, clutching his left hand, was she.
This was the woman so much loved, that from one lyre
had flowed more lamentations than had ever flowed
from throats of wailing women; mourning
which had made a world of sorrow, like the world we know
— its woods and valleys, roads and villages, its rivers, fields and beasts —
yet other, so that round this sorrow-world the sun still circled
and the stars still held their courses in the silent sky:
a sorrow-heaven with disfigured stars.
So much was she loved.
But now, uncertainly, with quiet patience, on she came,
her hand held in the god’s,
her step impeded by the windings of her shroud.
She was within herself
as if she were a woman near her time,
and gave no thought to him who went ahead,
nor to the way which led them up to life.
She was within herself
and in her deathly state she found fulfilment.
Death was new to her, beyond her understanding,
filling her with sweetness and with darkness
like a ripened fruit.
She’d gained a new virginity, untouchable,
her female part closed up
the way a flower, just bloomed, will close at evening,
and her hands — unmarried now — so chaste and separate
that she endured the lightest guiding touch the god maintained
as too familiar.
She’d been the inspiration for the poet’s songs,
his golden girl, the perfumed island in their marriage bed.
She had been his. Now she was none of these.
Now she was disarranged like strands of tangled hair,
surrendered like the fallen rain,
scattered abroad like grain in glut.
Now she was root.
So, when the god abruptly stopped, and held her back,
and in a voice profoundly sad
pronounced the words: He has turned round,
she failed to understand, and quietly said: Who?
Dark against the brightness of the upper world,
a distant figure stood. It was just any man.
His face was indiscernible.
He stood and watched as, on the strip of meadow path,
the god of messages, his countenance weighed down with grief,
turned silently to follow the retreating form,
already walking down the way they’d come,
her step impeded by the windings of her shroud,
uncertainly, with quiet patience, in the gloom.
