In the story it sounds like sorrow’s over.
They don’t write how it never
leaves, how it sounds in every
wind, in every rain, soaks
your heart like rain soaks the fields.
Even at the very beginning of spring
when the whole luscious season stretches
before you, when wildflowers bloom from every
crevice of the gray stone cliffs, never
does a moment pass when your heart
is not anchored by the knowledge
that Persephone must leave.
A deal was made. One third
for Hades, two thirds for you:
the original custody suit.
And though you were a goddess,
though you could strike
and not a sprout of grain, not a grape,
not an olive would grow, still
you couldn’t shift the balance any further.
And neither can I.
Gladly I would have stopped the poppies
from waving their brilliant flares, frozen
the stiff curled leaves of kale, twining peas,
and left them to blacken.
What the story doesn’t tell is how you go on,
year after immortal year. How even in the thick
heat of summer, when bees swarm in the broad leaves
and figs swell like aroused women, even then
sorrow coats you like salt,
a white residue on the rich black furrows.
And life will never be the same. Even
when you get her back. Hell leaves its mark.
Your heart, like mine, is shattered, an ancient urn.
I have pieced the shards together,
but much is dust. Even in summer
wind blows through the cracks.
They begged you to allow the corn to grow again.
They write that you were kind
but I think kindness had little to do with it.
You’d done what you could.
People may as well eat.