are the authors of all awful desires,
but she didn’t dare to contradict
a future queen with a quotable response.
Meanwhile Minos was telling his troops
they were winning the war, though they wouldn’t have guessed it:
the siege of Megara seemed to consist
of sunbathing and reciprocal attrition.
The princess watched Hupakoë
rescue the king from rebels and restore
martial discipline while Minos dithered.
The cold days had scuttled Scylla’s desire,
but she refused to believe how disfigured he looked.
Then another insurrection interrupted the siege,
impoverishing Hupakoë’s patience.
The Cretan rebels’ rotting corpses
clumped on the beach where Minos declared
victory over the vicious Atticans
but blamed Hupakoë’s poor tactics
for the sluggishness of the city’s fall.
Minos couldn’t fully man his armada,
so the Cretans set fire to a few of the ships
and rowed the ridiculed remnant home.
Amid Megara’s garish rejoicings,
Athea discovered that Scylla’s scalp
interrupted its black with some blue tresses.
As her father’s lock faded to mauve,
these tresses purpled. Impertinent spring
repealed Boreas with pleasing breezes,
but she’d already learned that loving men
means needless pain. When Nisos died,
she helped to pose him on his pyre, and that
was the last time she would touch a man.
Her lock was pale compared to the purple
her father’s rippled when he reigned smugly.
The new queen freed Sophia and Athea,
whose prudent counsel improved Megara.
The queen permitted the marketplace
a degree of independence her greedy father
would’ve considered insufferable.
Soon Megara excelled Athens
in trade and lured the latter’s most
imaginative sophists. The emancipation
of Megara’s slaves galled parasites,
but no painters abandoned their brushes for brooms,
and no rhapsodes left their lyres for looms.
Theseus kept on courting the queen,
but she refused to see him and sent back his gifts.
Marrying him means abdication.
But I mustn’t repeat Hippolyta’s error.
She delayed deciding as her lock reddened.