I’m writing this on April 13 cos yesterday I was too
tired to feel inspired! I wrote a first draft that didn’t work and it was
small, so here goes the extended version.
Prompt:
Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem
inspired by Wallace Stevens’ poem, Peter Quince at the Clavier.
It’s a complex poem that not only heavily features the idea of music, but is
structured like a symphony. Its four sections, like symphonic movements, play
with and expand on an overall theme. Try writing a poem that makes reference to
one or more myths, legends, or other well-known stories, that features wordplay
(including rhyme), mixes formal and informal language, and contains multiple
sections that play with a theme. Try also to incorporate at least one abstract
concept – for example, desire or sorrow or pride or whimsy.
Two contracts
I
She was salt,
because he looked back.
It was his fault.
We know the tale that’s told.
We know the ending.
But do we know why he failed?
It was not because he loved her
too much, or he was too eager,
but because fear got the better.
He was told to wait,
but he could not,
so he chose her fate.
She became salt.
No longer a woman,
or even an object,
but mineral; white grit
slipping through his hands.
Something that dissolved into his flesh,
becoming him.
II
It was not always so.
Our story begins in the twisting forest,
below giant trees astride a sparkling stream,
where Orpheus would sit and play his lyre,
a gift from Apollo, who taught him to play.
Needless to say, no one could resist his melodies.
Even the sparrows flocked to his side to listen.
So it was that a wood nymph, the most beautiful
and kind, fell in love with him and he with her.
And they were happy, for a time,
for you know this is not a happy story.
Walking in the tall grass on her wedding day,
Eurydice was chased by a lusty satyr, who wanted her
for himself. In her haste to escape, she tripped,
was bitten by a snake and died.
Orpheus found her. Instead of joining her,
he played sad songs that made the gods cry.
Time passed and his grief would not lessen,
so he made the dark descent into Hades.
There, he would beg for his wife’s return.
III
Protected by the gods, Orpheus relied on his charm
to find his way through this grim, cold world,
and his seductive lyre even kept him from harm
from Cerberus, the three-headed guard dog.
Hades, god of the Underworld and keeper of dead souls,
was a stubborn, stern and selfish man, having abducted
Persephone from the Upper World to force his vows
on one summer’s day while she was gathering flowers.
Demeter, the goddess of the Earth and harvest,
cursed the world til it fell barren in her heartbreak
over her daughter, forcing Zeus to made haste
and seek a compromise with the unrepentant Hades.
So, when it was autumn and winter, it was here in the
dark
that was Persephone’s home, away from her family.
In spring and summer, she’d return to the sun,
connecting the worlds of the dead and the living.
IV
Somehow, Hades found himself moved by Orpheus’s plight.
“You can take your wife, Eurydice, back with you
to the Upper World,” he told Orpheus,
but there is one condition…
Orpheus could not believe his luck.
It was such a simple request,
such an easy test.
But as he mounted the stone steps up,
he could not hear Eurydice’s footsteps.
And that is when fear played a trick on him…
He turned.
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 12, 2025
