Minerva tore from the loom
That gallery of divine indiscretions
And ripped it to rags.
Then, all her power gone
Into exasperation, struck Arachne
With her boxwood shuttle
One blow between the eyes, then another,
Then a third, and a fourth. Arachne
Staggered away groaning with indignation.
She refused to live
With the injustice. Making a noose
And fitting it round her neck
She jumped into air, jerked at the rope’s end,
And dangled, and spun.
Pity touched Minerva.
She caught the swinging girl: ‘You have been wicked
Enough to dangle there for ever
And so you shall. But alive,
And your whole tribe the same through all time
Populating the earth.’
The goddess
Squeezed onto the dangling Arachne
Venom from Hecate’s deadliest leaf.
Under that styptic drop
The poor girl’s head shrank to a poppy seed
And her hair fell out.
Her eyes, her ears, her nostrils
Diminished beyond being. Her body
Became a tiny ball.
And now she is all belly
With a dot of head. She retains
Only her slender skilful fingers
For legs. And so for ever
She hangs from the thread that she spins
Out of her belly.
Or ceaselessly weaves it
Into patterned webs
On a loom of leaves and grasses –
Her touches
Deft and swift and light as when they were human.