cursed by some god or goaded by boredom.
So he made himself remember the scent
of a gorgeous heifer guarded by a man
with two hundred eyelids, who opened a few
when the shackled captive shook the tree
and olives plunked his diagonal chine
and moos brindled the branches’ umbrage.
That was Nemea—another life.
The bull questioned the queen’s desire,
gently bisecting the adjoining loins,
hoping she’d call a halt to their passion,
but the coffin rocked and the rivets eased
and poking splinters parodied foreplay
unable to bracket the breaching throes,
which her lover redoubled till his legacy gushed,
and pinkened Pasiphaë’s purple lap—
but that wasn’t the reason the whitecaps refused
to sink the bull: Poseidon wished
to keep him alive in case, repenting,
Minos decided to sacrifice him—
Better late than never, thought the lonely god.
So the bull traversed the vacillating plain
and reached the banks of a broad delta,
where Poseidon’s rule suddenly dissolved.
Here fishermen and fisherwomen
were drawing in nets to dry on the docks.
The brown people peered at the ruddy
boy who flaunted a bull’s head
and a hoof for one hand and a hoof for one foot.
Their faces bruised the briny docks
to revere the boy, a visiting god,
whom the whole village hurried to greet.
Gossip rescinded the south’s languor,
and the queen, hearing her hawk report
she’d seen the god, descended the Nile
to welcome him to The White Walls.
The queen perched on a porphyry barge
the infatuated Nile refused to sink,
not even when the white bull carried
Asterion aboard, and the stern staggered.
Her court musicians crowded the decks,
where dancers twirled between the rowers.
But her piety couldn’t surpass Nature
in every respect: though the oboes burbled,
the pealing breezes broke the spell
her perfume cast on the pregnant sails.
Asterion needed no adornment,
for the queen’s beauty was queer enough:
a papyrus umbel supplied her hair
in a rack of antlers’ wriggly braces.
So they made their way to The White Walls,
whose paintings confirmed that falcons and lions
and jackals and cats and crocodiles
could flourish heads on human shoulders.
Asterion wept and the white bull wished
his muzzle could encode some consolation,
but what looked like sorrow was something different,
and his son was happy to settle in Egypt.
Queen Berenib knew that her scribes
would urge her to marry or abdicate.
Years elapsed: the beloved queen
estimated the scope of her scribes’ boldness:
their nagging would simmer nine summers
before they forced her to make up her mind.
So Berenib studied Asterion
as he and his father familiarized
themselves with her country, its customs and glyphs.
The scribes erected a rock cartouche
and filled it with sand their slaves graded
whenever the white bull worked all the way
to the left margin, molding his forehoof
into a reed through ruthless drills.
After a year, he could answer the priests’
questions in writing. He narrated the follies
that gather renown on northern islands.
But he said nothing about the sun’s daughter.