in echoing down its cochlea. Mother and son
loosened one another’s bonds and won
some freedom in unfreedom. They caressed
the cave’s blind sockets, and false hopes recessed
innumerable times until they found
a corridor. It seemed to wind around
the mountain’s core, and narrowed more and more
until the mother couldn’t clear its bore—
a lone kernel in a cyclops sieve.
She told the boy: I love you: you must live!
This passageway might bring you back to me,
but if it doesn’t, if it lets you see
the bright sky, live. Don’t try to save
me, son: a god’s old cradle will be my grave.
Leave Crete as soon as you can find a boat
and try to steer it south. Let Minos gloat:
grandfather will avenge me. Asterion,
outside Crete, the ruling god’s the sun,
not Zeus, the rapist. There’s a fertile land
thriving between infinities of sand.
They call it Egypt. You’ll be happy there.