According to the Greeks, Athena invented the flute
from the shinbone of a stag. Blowing into it
by the bank of the Hippocrene, she caught a glimpse
of her face, lips puckered like a pigskin purse,
and pitched the wretched tibia into the creek,
where that satyr Marsyas was sure to look,
shambling to slake his morning-after thirst.
Befuddled by the other-worldly wails
cascading from the cursed bone, his face in the water
pug-nose and ragged ears-seemed ugly as ever.
Foul airs, unseemly fugues assailed Apollo’s
envious ear, and the inevitable followed.
The Athenians swear to us the end was clean,
the edge of Apollo’s anger scalpel-thin.
One stroke, scrotum to throat—and lo!
kneeling, the deity peeled back the belly-fleece,
parting that downy sheath, as when the breeze
draws back a cloud and aether blazes through.
The Phrygians, however, those shameless queens,
those tricked-out trollops reeking of cheap cologne,
tell us their great-great-grandfathers long before
were shagged from nape to heel with caprid hair.
To hear their side, a kid called Marsyas,
haunting the fetid pond where the centaurs drank
(attar of donkey-piss and trampled moss),
caught the breeze playing with herself in the reeds,
tore out a handful and capered back to his lair.
Interval: from the mouth of the grotto flowed
the first uncertain half-notes, hesitant tremolos.
No reasonable Greek would dream a goat
could bleat in counterpoint, some unkempt brute
could teach their bards to sing. To hear them talk,
their proto-poet wriggled fully-crowned
from the cool, tall, smooth, Euclidean brow
of that maiden aunt, Athena of the withering look.
And still, the Phrygians sneer, no decent Greek
to this very day can hear the squeal of flutes
and not feel at the nape of his neck the prickling furze.
Before daft Marsyas came, the deities
shuffled cheerlessly their haunts—Chronos
the tone-deaf, dumb Gaia, inarticulate Zeus,
Apollo Pussyfoot, glum as a judge. Up there
no one played anything, not even the air.
Leave a Reply