Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes. Rilke. Melissa Green. Bliss.

Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes - their story is rendered exquisite in a poem by Rilke translated by award-winning US poet Melissa Green and posted as part of Tuesday Poem which I curate with Claire Beynon.

This is the treat that is TP - each week to open up and not know what there'll be... and there they are these poems in the blogroll: bright gems, chewy sweets, airbourne birds, bitter leaves ... and tucked in a blog that comes out of Winthrop Massachusetts this week is a rewritten/translated myth I know and don't know. And it is all of those things.

For the minutes it takes to read the words, I am inside the skin of Eurydice as she walks behind Hermes to reach daylight ('like a fruit rich with its own sweetness and bruises, she was filled to brimming with the enormity of her death'), inside the skin of Hermes as he leads her 'the wings on his ankles lightly fluttering', inside the skin of doubting Orpheus in a sky-blue cloak and 'the delicate lyre which had grown into his left shoulder the way a rose might be espaliered on an olive tree.'

How more perfectly could they be rendered?

Read it here.

1 comment:

Elisabeth said...

I agree, Mary, this is an exquisite re-rendering of a heartbreaking story. Thanks for re-visiting it.