Thank Helios, who hates hoarders,
generous Helios, who burns generally.
Thank Helios: his thermal tropes
allow us to measure the length of sieges.
One tower diverged from the vocal walls
impeding the Cretans; Apollo’s gold
lyre once burned on its battlements,
and the chords he struck there clutched them still.
Nisos had a daughter, who on days when the Cretans
rested from fighting, rang the tower
by flicking pebbles at the flaring bricks,
wringing the lees, the lyre’s tune.
On battle days, the boasts and yelps
would muffle the lithic music she made there,
but nonetheless she lingered to watch.
Since the siege obstructed her insouciant studies
of the bay and the meadows, she memorized
the Cretan leaders: one look at a spear,
a cuirass, a helmet, or a horse and she’d know
its owner’s name. She knew one face
obsessively well, with the wan ramparts
surrounding the eyes of Europa’s son.
If his helmet blocked his bleaching hair,
Scylla would say, He was so handsome.
If he let the breezes brine his forelock,
Scylla would say, He was so handsome.
When Minos joined javelins to flesh,
the virgin would praise his violence.
When a feathered nock nudged his shoulder,
she thought he was Apollo poised for vengeance.
But when he jumped on his white horse’s
jeweled saddle and the jerking bit
bubbled foam and the breeze scalloped
his purple chlamys and her people fled,
she shuddered so much, lamenting she’d never
feel the joy his javelin felt
when Minos reeled it or the reins’ pleasure
when his sweat scoured them. Scylla wanted
to cross over to the Cretan side.
One day Minos, remained in his camp,
and love suggested if she jumped off the tower,
lobbed by a gust, she’d land near him.