Orpheus crawled from the ground upon his hands and knees,
His days he faced in bitterness without Eurydice,
He wiped the bloodstains from his face, coughed up gravedirt and leaves,
And tore the music from his throat, resigned to silent be.

Surrendered to the quiet, he deprived the world of song,
Without her harmony, he thought, the melody was wrong,
Perverted echoes tried to sing but they were never strong.
When silent in a violent world, where then could he belong?

Returned then to their wedding bed, alone he lay and wept.
Moonlit air betwixt his wretched, ragged sobbing crept.
His weary lungs began to slow, and at birdsong he slept,
Dreaming, saw a horde of women, manic and godswept.

Her melancholy wails resonated throughout Hell.
Sat upon his throne there reigned the King that knew them well.
Under the crooked back of grief the riot could be quelled,
For dangerous is Orpheus and his melodic spell.

The maenads came for him as prophesied within his dream,
Tore his body limb from limb, a cloak ripped at its seam,
A mad and Bacchic frenzy blinded the infernal team,
From witnessing his dying smile, as if at last, redeemed

Two lovers’ outstretched hands reach now across the murky water,
Drowning out the souls who shout in mourning for their slaughter.
The bridge of years they passed apart was, in an instant, broken,
They did not trust themselves to sing, so ‘I love you’ was spoken.