The city gate discredited her claim
that she would walk through fire and walk through swords:
Megara’s burliest veterans kept their wards
before a door whose bar she’d never lift.
She wondered if a god would make a rift
in that impervious barrier, but a name
is necessary for the praying game.
She asked Athea, Who’s the god of doors?
Pirates had stretched her life between far shores,
and she had wisdom that her menial chores
couldn’t belie. There is no god of doors—
no goddess either, and I don’t know why.
We’re told that Cerberus will horrify
whoever crosses Hades’ entrance, but
no one would worship that three-headed mutt.
Not even Cretans are so desperate.
Scylla commanded Athea to get
a spotless billy goat. Then Scylla unrolled
the blank scroll that would bear the manifold
glories of Minos if her ink and reed
could ape the ideal for which the goat would bleed.
She drew his profile, but a conic beard
supplanted his bare chin, and Scylla feared
the mind behind her hand. Then Nisos doused
that fear by lurching, moderately soused,
past her doorless doorway. Scylla creased
her scroll’s tongue, puzzled that he left the feast
so early. But he didn’t ask her why
she knelt before a scroll. He tipped one eye,
too bleared to wink, and staggered on, unmoved
by her rigidity. He disapproved
of writing and the idea that women need
anything more than food and walls. Her reed
dribbled unnoticed ink as Nisos reeled
out of her earshot.       When she peeled
the wet fold open, a small hole grinned,
and Scylla found the head she’d drawn had twinned.
Athea came back with a billy goat,
and Scylla stained a bronze knife at his throat.
Some blood gushed down the crease into the hole,
which made a sound like sucking till the scroll
stood up: a small man with diverging faces
and a napeless neck. Attended by no Graces,
he doomed the old woman with his birthday dance,
whose rhythm taught the Muses to fear chance.
Athea thought this monster had to die.
Her mistress was still holding the knife high.