Nisos, forgive me! O gods, forbid her
to set foot on land or sink in the sea!
Whatever you decide, I’m certain of one thing:
Crete, my father’s cradle, will never
let in this whore as long as I’m king!
After Minos, the most righteous
of conquerors, gave Megara new laws,
he commanded his captains to cut the ropes
and commence bringing his brazen navy
homeward to Crete. Her crime had earned her
no place on his decks: he didn’t even
bother to kill her. She begged oarsmen
to pull her up, but they pushed her down.
She kept wading: if she went ashore,
her betrayed compatriots would treat her cruelly.
And if she survived their indignation,
she’d still have to face her father. Scylla
said all her prayers, but the sails retreated.
Her curls fell loose, and she cudgeled her head
with knobbed fingers. You’re fleeing the one
who gave you victory, who revered you more
than her own father and fatherland!
So cruel: your prize was my crime, my virtue.
But my love, my help, my hope, which piled
themselves upon you, punish me now:
you just don’t care! You’re discarding me.
Where can I go? Megara? But my treason
makes that unwise. What about father?
Can I reconcile myself and his ruin?
Megarans want me dead—for good reason.
Corinth and Eleusis will loathe my example.
Only your island lies open to me.
If you ditch me here, after all I’ve done,
ungrateful coward, I guess Europa
wasn’t your mother: must’ve been Syrtis,
an Armenian tigress, or torqueing Charybdis
on a day the North Wind was driving her wild.
I refuse to believe your father could be Zeus
or that your mother was deceived by a simulated bull.
A lying rumor! It was a real bull,
a pervert that never knew a heifer.
May Nisos laugh when he learns my fate!
And the walls I betrayed turn it to song!
I deserve to die. I desire it.
But the people I betrayed should punish me—
not someone who profits from their suffering.
Your wife, who lured a wild bull with wood
and whose womb produced a dissonant child—
that’s exactly the wife you deserve, Minos.
Do the winds that fatten your fleeing sails
usher my words to your ears or starve them?
It’s small wonder Pasiphaë
considered her bull a better companion:
you’re more ferocious. . . . Real pain, at last!
They hurry away. The waves gurgle,
slapped by oars. I’m receding, and the coast.
No hope! You’ve forgotten all the good I did you.