the meter of his song, which wondered how
things would be different if the Argo’s prow
had come near Crete. He sang about the snake
on sandy Lemnos, how he kept awake
studying divination in his cave
the night that Jason took the island’s brave
or love-mad queen there to refresh their lust;
how when her ecstasy became disgust,
he cut the snake’s head off and tossed it out;
how it rolled downhill to the roundabout
path of Okeanos, whose left hand brought
the snake’s head to a place no Argonaut
would ever reach, an island far north where
Boreas wriggles on the foggy air;
how the god wept to see his bodiless
son, whose indignity he could redress
only by impeding Hera’s favorites; how
the frustrated wind god, who refused to allow
the Argo to sail north, loudly blew it south;
how Jason saw the Kairatos’s mouth
and would’ve disembarked on Crete, had Talos
a robot built in old Asterion’s palace
by the Telchines, not seen him first and threw
his rocks so hard they would’ve broken through
the hull of any normal vessel; how
from his nailed bronze foot to his bulging brow
one vein flowed; how Herakles despaired;
how the queen defied the rocks and bared
her breasts and walked astern; how Talos tripped