"tereus" poems
This brown buff speckled throstle of a bird sits in the higher most branches of a yet to be leafed poplar tree . . . and sings. Such a song in the April morning air it greets the day, celebrates the rising sun. Above a suburban street the bird’s song catches the reverberation of a double row of houses, their windows bouncing sonic reflections of unaccompanied melismata.
Olivier Messiaen loved this bird for its répétition égale. Walking the mountain woods around his summer home he would wonder that the grive musicienne could make so exactly repetition after repetition of a complex phrase. A proto-minimalist perhaps? The male mistle thrush appears in several ***** works but most prominently in Saint Francois d'Assis singing luminously on the clarinet.
Although this is the ungregarious male singing away on this spring morning his name carries a female designation Turdus Philomelos. Poor Philomel, whose name means one who loved song, she was a princess of Athens lusted after by King Tereus who took her to a cottage in distant woods and ***** her. Then, he cut out her tongue.
Vengeful Philomel alone in the woods, but a most resourceful and artistic young woman, she set about weaving a tapestry that told all.
*‘She set up a Tracian loom
And wove on a white fabric scarlet symbols
That told in detail what had happened to her*.’
She sent the finished piece to Tereus who promptly ordered Philomel's death and that of her sisters (one of whom he was married to). As the girls were about to be slain they were changed magically into three birds . .
Joanna Laurens play The Three Birds takes the only fragment we have of Sophocles telling of this strange tale. Laurens is both musician and linguist and the text is a marvel of strange sounds and rhythms as the sisters communicate with each other in their personal private language akin, it is said, to Jersiese, an ancient Breton dialect.
So thank you dear song thrush for this morning's wonder: a song sans pariel.
Jan 18, 2013
Jan 18, 2013 at 12:52 AM UTC
While thou on Tereus descant'st better skill.
Some in their garments, though new-fangled ill,
For nothing this wide universe I call,
My love is as a fever, longing still
'Long may they kiss each other, for this cure!
Doth in her poison'd closet yet endure.'
He kisses her; and she, by her good will,
To accessary yieldings, but still pure
But low shrubs wither at the cedar's root.
He shall not boast who did thy stock pollute
And leave the faltering feeble souls alive?
And, thou away, the very birds are mute;
For now she knows it is no gentle chase,
Because the cry remaineth in one place,
To change your day of youth to sullied night;
Dulling my lines and doing me disgrace.
Then call them not the authors of their ill,
Like to a mortal butcher bent to ****
'O Jove,' quoth she, 'how much a fool was I
An humble gait, calm looks, eyes wailing still,
But her foresight could not forestall their will.
The silly lambs: pure thoughts are dead and still,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
Is form'd in them by force, by fraud, or skill:
Whose ridges with the meeting clouds contend:
Were it not sinful then, striving to mend,
Doth half that glory to the sober west,
In true plain words by thy true-telling friend;
Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead?
Is madly toss'd between desire and dread;
For all my mind, my thought, my busy care,
A second fear through all her sinews spread,
And, blushing with him, wistly on him gazed;
Her earnest eye did make him more amazed:
And for my sake serve thou false Tarquin so.
That two red fires in both their faces blazed;
That all the world besides methinks are dead.
For then is Tarquin brought unto his bed,
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
O me, what eyes hath Love put in my head,
He ran upon the boar with his sharp spear,
Stands on his hinder legs with listening ear,
She tears the senseless Sinon with her nails,
Doth yet in his fair welkin once appear;
Nov 4, 2018
Nov 4, 2018 at 2:53 PM UTC