The Flood
He was poised to hurl volleys of thunderbolts
All over the world, but he backed off in sudden fear
That the conflagration might kindle the sacred aether
And set the long axis on fire from pole to pole.
He recalled, too, that a time was fated to come
When land and sea and heaven's majestic roof
Would catch fire, and the foundations of the world
Would go up in flames. So he laid aside
The weapons forged by Cyclopean hands
And chose instead a different punishment:
To overwhelm humanity with an endless deluge
Pouring down from every square inch of sky.
So he shut up the North Wind in Aeolus' cave
Along with every breeze that disperses clouds.
But he cut loose the South Wind, which scudded out
On dripping wings, scowling in pitch-black mist,
His beard sodden with rain, his white hair
Streaming water, clouds nesting on his forehead,
And dew glistening on all his feathers and robes.
The flat of his hand presses low-hanging clouds
And rain crashes down from the sky. Then Iris,
Juno's rainbowed messenger, draws up more water
To feed the lowering clouds. Crops farmers prayed for
Are beaten flat; years of hard work are all blotted out.
Jove's wrath was not content with his own sky's water,
So his sea-blue brother rolled out auxiliary waves.
The Rivers jumped to formation in their tyrant's palace
And he gave his command:
"My brief to you is to pour forth everything you have.
This is a crisis. Open wide
Your doors and dikes give your streams free rein!"
The Rivers returned, uncurbed their springs,
And tumbled unbridled down to the sea.
Neptune himself struck the Earth with his trident;
She trembled, and split mouths wide open for geysers,
And the Rivers spread out over the open plains,
Sweeping away orchards and crops, cattle and men,
Houses and shrines and the shrines' sacred objects.
If any houses were able to resist this disaster
And still stood, the waves soon covered their roofs,
And towers were submerged beneath the flood.
And now sea and land could not be distinguished.
All was sea, but it was a sea without shores.
Here's a man on a hilltop, and one in his curved skiff,
Rowing where just yesterday he plowed.
Another one Sails over acres of wheat or the roof of his farmhouse
Deep undet:'W'ater. Here's someone catching a fish
In the top of an elm. Sometimes an anchor
Sticks in a green meadow, or keels brush the tops
Of vineyards beneath. Where slender goats once browsed
Seals now flop their misshapen bodies. Nereids gape
At houses, cities, and groves undersea,
And dolphins cruise through forest canopies,
Grazing the oak trees with their flippers and tails.
Wolves swim with sheep, tawny lions and tigers
Tread the same currents.The boar's lightning tusks
And the stag's speed are useless as the torrent
Sweeps them away.With no land in sight, no place to perch
The exhausted bird drops into the sea,
Whose unbridled license has buried the hills
And now pounds mountaintops with unfamiliar surf.
Most creatures drown.Those spared by the water
Finally succumb to slow starvation.
Deucalion and Pyrrha
Phocis is a land that separates Boeotia
From Oetaea, a fertile land while it was still land,
But now it was part of the sea, a great plain
Of flood water. There is a steep mountain there
With twin peaks stretching up through the clouds
To the high stars. Its name is Parna**us.
When Deucalion and his wife landed here
In their little skiff (water covered everything else)
They first paid a visit to the Corycian nymphs,
The mountain gods, and Themis, who was the oracle then.
There was no man better or more just than he,
And no woman revered the gods more than she.
When Jupiter saw the whole world reduced
To a stagnant pond, and from so many thousands
Only one man left, from so many thousands
Only one woman, each innocent, each reverent,
He parted the clouds, and when the North Wind
Had swept them away, he once again showed
The earth to the sky, and the heavens to the earth.
The sea's roiling anger subsided, as Neptune
Lay down his trident and soothed the waves. He hailed
Cerulean Triton rising over the crests,
His shoulders encrusted with purple shellfish,
And told him to blow his winding horn
To signal the floods and streams to withdraw.
Old Triton lifted the hollow, spiraling shell
Whose sound fills the shores on both sides of the world
When he gets his lungs into it out in mid-ocean.
When this horn touched the sea god's lips, streaming
With brine from his dripping beard, and sounded the retreat,
It was heard by all the waters of land and sea,
And all the waters that heard were held in check.
Now the sea had a shore, rivers flowed in channels,
The floods subsided, and hills emerged into view.
The land rose up; locales took shape as waters shrank,
And at long last the trees bared their leafy tops,
Foliage still spattered with mud left by the flood.
The world was restored. But when Deucalion saw
It was an empty world, steeped in desolate silence,
Tears welled up in his eyes as he said to Pyrrha,
"My wife and sister, the last woman alive,
Our common race, our family, our marriage bed
And now our perils themselves have united us.
In all the lands from sunrise to sunset
We two are the whole population; the sea holds the rest.
And our lives are far from guaranteed. These clouds
Still strike terror in my heart. Poor soul,
What would you feel like now if the Fates
Had taken me and left you behind? How could you bear
Your fear alone? Who would comfort your grief?
You can be sure that if the sea already held you,
I would follow you, my wife, beneath the sea.
Oh, if only I could restore the people of the world
By father's arts, breathe life into molded clay!
Now the human race rests on the two of us.
We are, by the gods' will, the last of our kind."
He spoke and wept. Their best recourse was to implore
The divine, to beg for help through sacred prophecy.
So they went ide by side to the stream of Cephisus
Which, though not yet clear, flowed in its old banks.
They scooped up some water, sprinkled their heads and clothes,
And made their familiar way to the sacred shrine
Of the goddess. The gables were stained with slime and mold,
And the altars stood abandoned without any fires.
When they reached the temple steps. Husband and wife
Prostrated themselves, kissed the cold stone trembling,
And said, "If divine hearts can be softened by prayers
Of the just, if the wrath of the gods can be deflected,
Tell us, O Themis, how our race can be restored,
And bring aid, O most mild one, to a world overwhelmed."
The goddess, moved, gave this oracular response:
"Leave this temple. Veil your heads, loosen your robes,
And throw behind your back your great mother's bones."
They stood there, dumbfounded. It was Pyrrha
Who finally broke the silence, refusing to obey
The commands of the goddess. She prays for pardon
With trembling lips, but trembles all over
At the thought of offending her mother's shades
By tossing her bones. Stalling for time,
The pair revisit the orac1e's words, turning them
Over and over in their minds searching out
Their dark secrets. At last Prometheus' son
Comforts the daughter of Epimetheus
With these soothing words:
Either I'm mistaken
Or - since oracles are holy and never counsel evil-
Our great mother is Earth, and stones in her soil
Are the bones we are told to throw behind our backs."
Pyrrha was moved by her husband's surmise,
But the pair still were not sure that they trusted
The divine admonition. On the other hand,
What harm was there in trying? Down they go,
Veiling their heads, untying their robes, and throwing stones
Behind them just as the goddess had ordered.
And the stones began (who would believe it
Without the testimony of antiquity?)
To lose their hardness, slowly softening
And a**uming shapes. When they had grown and taken on
A milder nature, a certain resemblance
To human form began to be discernible,
Not well defined, but like roughed-out statues.
The parts that were damp with earthy moisture
Became bodily flesh; the rigid parts became bones;
And the veins remained without being renamed.
In no time at all, by divine power, the stones
Thrown by the man's hand took the form of men
And from the woman's scattered stones women were born.
And so we are a tough breed, used to hard labor,
And we are living proof of our origin.