The latter hearkened to the head’s predictions
concerning Minos and considered it his duty
to set sail as soon as possible
and convey the obnoxious news to his king.
Had he waited to hear what would happen
on the voyage home, the head would’ve warned him
that their ship would get stuck in shallow waters
right off Lebinthos, and directing his crew
to free the keel from that fractal bay,
Hupakoë would hit his head on the rock
that would shatter the ship, and he’d never know
how well the future fit the prophecy.
The years’ progress oppressed the oppressor.
Cretans found him funny, and foreign kings
no longer worried he’d wage any wars.
Minos was the one wearied by worries,
and his heart pounded when he heard Miletus,
the name of a boy whose beauty had allured
the king’s affections a few years before.
Through love or fear or laziness,
he couldn’t bring himself to banish Miletus,
who rumors claimed was rousing the people
to eject the king from his gypsum throne.
But pious Miletus, as proud of his mother
as he was of Apollo, departed from Crete
before Minos could force him out:
he wouldn’t mar his mother’s country
with a civil war. He wounded the sea
with a Cretan keel and came to Asia
where he built a town that bore his name.
Miletus grew as great as Knossos,
but the new city’s namesake surrounded it
with high stone walls. Having rejected
so many suitors, male and female,
Miletus wanted to walk alone
along the Meander, who loves flowing
backward and forward, confusing his waves,
now to his source, now to the sea,
keeping his precarious current busy—
like Daedalus cramming uncountable paths
with circumlocution—arcades so tangled
it was difficult for Daedalus himself
to retrieve the labyrinth’s lone exit.
There was little hope for its hybrid inmate.
The Minotaur’s removal repaired
the king’s relish for the royal bed.
Pasiphaë groaned, and Glaukos crowned,
an orange scalp, a solar insult.
Rearing the labyrinth deranged Knossos:
the harbor’s piers procreated,
despising ships and aspiring to weave
a lattice no one could navigate;
the marketplace multiplied stalls
until newcomers needed to pay
a local guide to get across it;
the palace, once a patent hall,
became a place where a curious boy
could lose himself. Pasiphaë let
Glaukos roam. Glad to purge
the flaring orange, she filled her sight
with her highest window’s heaving blue.
The boy played with a ball named Sminth,
which he thought was really a rolling mouse.
One morning he chased the cheese-lover
out of the eyeshot of every slave.
When Minos arrived for the midday meal,
he said he wanted to see the boy,
but nobody knew where he’d gone.
Irate, Minos mustered his troops
to search all Knossos, but nothing turned up.
Then Minos compelled Hupakoë
to go back to Greece with gifts for Apollo,
all the way to Delphi, the world’s navel,
and ask its pit-addled Pythia where
Glaukos was hiding. Harvest was over,
and the sea would craze: if they safely reached
the mainland, they’d still be stuck in Phocis,
and the Pythia was a pitiless bitch.
But Hupakoë obeyed and bore the storms
better than Minos bore his absence
as a Cretan winter crawled toward dryness.
Minos wondered whether his wife
had hurt Glaukos. Her grief smirked
through the mourning season.
He decided to die, / He decided to kill her,
but Hupakoë returned. The Pythia announced
that Crete would welcome a weird creature
on the equinox, which was nearly upon them,
and that the person in the palace who found
the metaphor that matched it best
would also find the orange heir.
A cowherd brought a calf to Knossos
that was white in the morning, vermilion at noon,
and black by sunset. Summoned to the court,
Daedalus watched the weird creature
an entire day and didn’t know
what to call it. The king tired
of watching Daedalus watch the calf:
You’re supposed to be the big inventor!
Daedalus, make me a metaphor!
But the calf baffled the big inventor:
the more he stared, the more he stuttered.
There was a bard present, a poor Argive
named Polyeidos, who played the harp
and sang sad songs for Pasiphaë.
Lord Minos, forgive my meddling:
permit me to hazard a metaphor.
Minos nodded: Since no one else,
Will do my bidding today, it seems.
Am I right, De-de-de-daedalus?
Argive, make me a metaphor.
Polyeidos completed the task:
This mutant calf is a mulberry.
Minos smirked, Pasiphaë laughed,
and Daedalus hid his dripping eyes.
Minos exclaimed: Clever, Argive!
But you’ve only begun. He gave the bard
a helmet, a sword, and a hive of keys:
Start in the palace. He’s probably hiding
somewhere nearby. If the boy’s not here,
you’ll have to look through the labyrinth.
But they say Asterion is starving in there.
With a sword in your hand, you’ll have a chance.
After a night of numb waking,
Polyeidos went to the west garden
before the weird creature’s whiteness pinked.
He walked every footpath and waded the fishponds
and crawled under bushes where a boy might hide.
Trees enveloped with vines concealed
a row of sheds from royal perusal.
He leaned inside and saw the tools
the gardener kept there. Glaukos wasn’t
lurking amid the lichened retreats
of rakes and pails, but Polyeidos
liked exploring this part of the palace:
he couldn’t hear the king’s tantrums,
just the Minotaur’s remote sobbing.
A shady margin Minos disdained,
long addicted to grandiloquent glare.
Polyeidos almost forgot
that he came to the garden on the king’s business.
He followed a wall aware that moss
debarred murals. Buzzing stopped him:
an owl swooped, and swarming bees
vacated their place. Perched on a cellar
door, its cardiac disk ogling
Polyeidos, the owl sipped
some rainwater rilling the sill,
then fleered a screech and flew away.
Polyeidos supposed the sun
would set before he found the key
that fit the cellar; he considered using
his sword, but the king would consider that mischief.
The lock admitted the last key he tried,
and the door’s screeching outdid the owl’s.
Inside he beheld a honey urn
and a boy’s ankles—brim antennas.
The feet fell off when the Argive gripped them.
He put them in his helmet and pulled the remainder
of Glaukos out, his orange hair
a viscid sheaf. Shouldering the boy
and clutching his helmet’s capsized skullcap,
the Polyeidos walked from the West Garden
to the megaron. A murmuring shroud
covered the bard and the boy he carried.
Minos added ocular salt
to the candied corpse, while the Minotaur’s mother
rubbed the Argive’s insect-harried
skin with her balm. The bee plunder
had discouraged decay, so the king couldn’t
doubt the corpse’s identity.
Daedalus began drafting the prince’s
mausoleum, but Minos refused
to bury his son. I’ll bring him back.
I conquered all Greece, and the gods themselves
adore Minos: Death can’t keep him
without my approval. Hupakoë,