Mercury and Argus

a scene from Ovid's 'Metamorphoses,' Book I

Jove sent the young god Mercury to disarm
The guardian Argus with his boyish charm
And steal away his latest mistress, Io,
Whom he had changed into a cow as Juno
Came crashing through the air in gorgon fury
To try and catch him in adultery.
Suspicious of this strange and pure white cow
Whose hide had never been touched by a plough
She in her most annoying tone demanded
It as a gift and sent it to be guarded
Beneath the sleepless hundred eyes of Argus
Just by a grove held sacred to Inachus.

The pine cones peaked out from the bushy needles
Of low and lazy boughs in the adumbral
Large grove contracting from the summer's heat
That gnawed like morning on reluctant bed sheets.
Against a tree trunk thick with ivy sat
The mammoth Argus on a rich green mat
Of grass, his hundred eyes watching to see
Cicadas tubbing their legs on a tree,
A weasel crept in stealth ready to rush
An unsuspecting mouse there in the brush
And the proboscis of a butterfly
Dip gently in a flower's cup. Nearby
Among the reeds the milk white cow Queen Juno
Placed in his charge continued her sad low
While gazing down into a bright clear brook.
The Argus startled, and he stood to look;
In the distance was a human figure
Whose jaunty step would soon bring him much nearer.
He stretched his six arms in the waving sunlight,
Each one bespangled with colored and bright
Round eyes that squinted, "Who is this young peasant?"
He whispered as the thin-hipped adolescent
Drove on a herd of goats while he was spinning
A hazel wand and in a sweet voice singing.
The large eyes on his barrel chest and his
Three faces dilated and their colors
Flowed from deep purple to metallic red,
Then Argus cleared his throat and softly said,
"Good morning there, my boy, do come and lay
Here in the shade, rest from this scorching day.
The grass nearby will please a hungry herd
And in the berry bushes here the songbirds
Chant dreamy song of play and lazy ease,
So grant to me your company, if you please."
He spoke with his three voices forming chords
Within a minor key of liquid words
That curled like incense through the brittle air
And left the boy stunned with a wide-eyed stare.
He trembled slightly at the steel and blue
Tall Argus whose skin slowly changed its hue
Depending on the angle of the light.
"What god or titan, child of primal Night
Have encountered; what an awesome sight!
I'd dare not disobey any request
From you. May I, might I, play for your rest
The simple herder tune that I like best?"
"Of course you may, come in the shade, dear boy."
His faces smiled, he led the blushing, coy
Young man beneath the shadows of the trees.
"If you don't mind, so I can feel at ease
Within this heat might I remove my clothes?"
His naked body glistened like a rose
Relaxing in the dew of warn Spring's dawn.
A leather bag hung just before his groin
From which he took his pan pipes as a woodpecker
Began to tap out time in playful meter.
He squatted on the grass and sideways glanced
At Argus while the birds and insects danced
About them to the rune the young man blew
And as the song began to slow he drew
Up closer while the music's lazy spell,
Like Sleep's own golden poppy dust it fell,
Rubbed in the eyes. The smaller ones closed first
On his six arms beginning with the wrists
The iron muscles numbed, the solid stomach
Began to sink and with his soft breath quake
In flitting dreams' phantasmagoric fire
Illuminating writhing clamped desire.
The largest eyes set in the foreheads drifted
To twilight, blind as Mercury's right hand shifted
And quickly grasped the wand, now a spear;
He thrust it up into the neck to tear
It open, pierce the skull and pin the head
Against the pine stained with his blood and dead.

Santiago del Dardano Turann

Archived 06/20/2010