She draped a tent around the barge’s mast
and told Asterion they’d take a cruise
to cool off in the afternoon, a ruse
the white bull recognized. He claimed he had
to work out something on his writing pad
and couldn’t go. That afternoon the queen
whispered adoring epigrams between
the oarstrokes. Near dusk they curtained off the tent,
and what she proposed won his consent.
Her lips caressed his virginal shadoof,
lending her promises kinetic proof.
Their marriage mollified the impatient scribes,
and news of it delighted all the tribes
farming along the Nile. The white bull knew
their reign could only start once he withdrew.
A waxing gibbous moon illuminated
the final wedding rites. The white bull waited
another week, then secretly departed
the White Walls, having just imparted
the following message to the midnight sand:
“King Asterion, by the time you stand
before these glyphs, my pasterns might be wet!
I’ve lived for years on borrowed time, a debt
I didn’t choose, but still must pay in full,
or rile the god who made my soul a bull,
a Cretan shoal my mother’s womb, and Crete
the place where I must die. Your life’s too sweet
for your own good, my boy. When people treat
their mortal king as though he were a god,
this blessed state is actually a rod
with which the fates will punish both. Don’t let
luck interfere with logic. Always set
truth above boasts, unless you crave regret.”
He knew they’d look for him in every barge
plying the Nile, but he remained at large
by cutting through the desert to the sea.
The sudden onset of aridity
infected his right forehoof, but his pace
didn’t slow down. He heard the wind efface
the marks he made traversing empty space.
He loved that sound. One dune’s unrippled face
seduced his left forehoof to sketch a trace
of an amalgam in his memory:
a woman and a lion and a bee.
The desert reached the Archipelago,
which healed his swollen hoof with its stinging flow,
and was for him alone a blue plateau,
blooming the stars that taught him where to go.
Coincidence or not, Egyptian trade
did flourish in the wedding’s wake and made
distant cities need Egyptian grain
and think it was impossible to abstain
from that kingdom’s splendid luxuries.
Meanwhile Minos indulged old fantasies,
going from town to town and making Cretans
hear him retell them how Megaran cretins
and decadent Athenians dared defy
Minos the Great but couldn’t fortify
their cities well enough to keep him out.
A boring siege became a rapid rout
when Minos told the tale. He didn’t care
how much it rained or snowed and wouldn’t spare
armies of conscripts marching in full armor
as the dog days bayed. He didn’t think a farmer
had anything to tell a son of Zeus.
It’s harvest time! was only an excuse
sad ingrates made to shirk their marching duty.
Famine killed farmers, but Megaran booty
and the abundance of imported grain
enabled most of Knossos to maintain
its usual habits: fasting hampers passion,
and bony concubines were not in fashion,
and what use bodyguards too faint to stand?
Minos appeared as loud and fat and tanned
as ever, but when silver began peeping
out of diminished gold piles, his sleeping
contended with the word economy.
Though he burned Berenib in effigy
and claimed her greedy merchants were to blame
for Crete’s hunger, his rallies couldn’t tame
the price of grain, and though he said he’d launch
his whole fleet down the Nile, he couldn’t staunch
his coffers, bleeding bullion into ships
that somehow weren’t reduced to floating chips
but sailed to Egypt safely and returned
with more grain. Cities he had conquered learned
that Minos was too fat and sick to start
a war. They let his messengers depart
without his monthly tribute, and most stayed.
Minos told his doctors a king’s parade
was to be watched, not walked in, but his feet
became numb stubs while rain avoided Crete,
aggravating his mismanagement.
Though Minos wasn’t eager to repent,
he told Hupakoë to figure out
which angry god had beggared him with drought.
Your majesty once vowed to sacrifice
a white bull to Poseidon. My advice
is that you let us find him, if he’s still
alive, and bring him where you can fulfill
your vow and end Crete’s hardship: the altared shore.
Minos had doubts: That was long before
the Atticans murdered poor Androgeus
and I was weeping so hard and long that pus
ran from the salty wounds around these eyes.
No music for the Graces but my cries!
Didn’t I suffer enough? Didn’t my fleet
get my revenge and come back safe to Crete?
Hupakoë replied: Time doesn’t work
the same with men and gods: the latter lurk
sometimes for years in a tacit amnesty
before they take revenge. Your majesty
could never wait so long: once people see
their king lets disrespect and treachery
go unpunished, they’ll think he cannot rule.