#greek cosmology
I’ll start the singing By invoking the Bright Goddess the beautifully tressed Selene Hyperion’s child Daughter of brightness I praise you infinitely, She of the Lovely Hair That streams behind you as you ride
Your four milky-white mares through the stream of the sky Divine patroness of becoming a full and complete nymph a recognised woman Divine ruler of Night Puller of the silver strings Of Poseidon’s mighty tides Magnet of all life Surveyor of Gaia’s fertility
Whose green grass Grows wild and free Under my maiden’s feet Goddess to whom I’m singing this song to whom I shall always be singing For though you are not of the Twelve there you ride nontheless I bid thee safe journey, Bright One!
Lost Homeric Hymn to Selene (I)
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Give him strength, crouched on one knee in the dark
with the Earth on his back,
balancing the seven seas,
the oceans, five, kneeling
in ruthless, empty, endless space
for grace
of whale, dolphin, sea-lion, shark, seal, fish, every kind
which swarms the waters. Hero.
Hard, too,
heavy to hold, the mountains;
burn of his neck and arms taking the strain –
Andes, Himalayas, Kilimanjaro –
give him strength, he heaves them high
to harvest rain from skies for streams
and rivers, he holds the rivers,
holds the Amazon, Ganges, Nile, hero, hero.
Hired by no-one, heard in a myth only, lonely,
he carries a planet’s weight,
islands and continents,
the billions there, his ears the last to hear
their language, music, gunfire, prayer;
give him strength, strong girth, for elephants,
tigers, snow leopards, polar bears, bees, bats,
the last ounce of a humming-bird.
Broad-backed
in infinite, bleak black,
he bears where Earth is, nowhere,
head bowed, a genuflection to the shouldered dead,
the unborn’s hero, he is love’s lift;
sometimes the moon rolled to his feet, given.
Atlas by Carol Ann Duffy
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