With Apate's Blessings

Dark, dreamy night,

I hear your beguiling wiles,

I do. I do. I do.

The stars tracked by my eyes,

The Milky Way,

The milky sky,

The result of a woman’s wrath,

Hera pushed Hercules from her breast.

The suckling child now disconnected,

The milky whites in the sky collided.

“Such are women,” they say. 

I come from that tribe,

Ebony hair like the night,

The dark, dreamy night.

My father, Helios shone

And into the sea, he had thrown

Himself to get lost

In my mother’s dark locks,

In her silken nymph arms.

“Thus her blood corrupted,

Thus she’s a seductress,”

Such the disembodied words say 

Of the humans protected;

Nay, should I call them shades?

Protected by Hades!

Or rather should I tell

That once they fell

From life to the spell

Of beautiful death,

They gained some sort of bountiful draught

Of courage that their living lips had sought.

Then there’s the truth;

Then there’s the loot;

I swear I had to.

Once they entered my room.

It all began so:

When I sang at my window sill,

In the wind, their arms chilled.

They sought a warm body,

A body behind a voice,

A voice behind a window.

I didn’t know.

If I had, I would have drawn my bow,

My quiver and my axe,

I would not have been so lax,

Thinking I was safe at my home.

The mortals had another take,

“She seduced them, 

That female rake!”

Far from the truth,

They stole into my house,

Then my room.

I had to pretend!

“My dear men, 

Would you dine with me?”

If they thought I would give in readily,

Would they withdraw steadily?

And so I did what all the shades claimed,

With the blessings of Apate.

“In her vile way, she slipped,

Off grace and with a hiss,

A little poison wish

Into their meals.”

The men and their hands,

As they tried to grab my thighs

As I poured the wine

Into their goblets fine,

Grew limp with drowsiness.

So I brandished my wand,

Hekate’s blessing of Moon’s dawn,

And made them as they truly were,

Bore-like, pigs to be shunned. 

Then came another man.

Odysseus was he.

Burly arms and an equally burly back,

He stopped me in my track

With a blade at me drawn.

The wand, I withdrew.

What other choice did I have?

Turn them back, he said. 

So I did, however, with a change. 

They were younger with more shame,

They wouldn’t touch a dame.

A change in character is not perceived

From outside with ease.

That does not prevent it to exist.

But Odysseus and I fell

Before he would tell

He had a wife in Ithaca,

A son too.

And so we would make love,

He had brushed it off with a shrug,

After a year he wanted to go.

Without Hekte’s foresight,

I still knew my plight.

Days without his arms

Around me like a charm,

All I thought of was his lips,

The unabashed kiss,

Our tryst in the sheets.

I regret one dearly so,

My kindness towards my lover,

Whose heaving breath I miss forever,

“A woman scorned,”

Said the shades. 

So infamed am I,

That I wish I had lived up to it right,

Been that haggard witch,

Slashed his Ithaca to bits,

Burned his hair,

Given him a tail,

Pinned him to the ground,

Made him more than frown.

I wish I had let my ebony hair flair

Like the nightingale song lit the air,

In the witching hour,

With my mystical power,

Set carnage open ajar,

Like Pandora set free Apate.

I wish I hadn’t answered 

One night in that one year

To his, 

“Circe, do you love me?”

I do. I do. I do.