There also he saw
The celebrated women
And in death they looked askance;
He stood and faced them,
Shadows flocked by the dying ram
To sup the dark blood flowing at his heel
— His long sword fending them off,
Their whispering cold
Their transparent grey throats from the lifeblood.
He saw the daughters, wives
Mothers of heroes or upstanding kings
The longhaired goldbound women who had died
Of pestilence, famine, in slavery
And still queens but they did not know
His face, even Anticleia
His own mother. He asked her how she died
But she passed by his elbow, her eyes asleep.
The hunter still followed
Airy victims, and labour
Afflicted even here the cramped shoulders —
The habit of distress.
A hiss like thunder, all their voices
Broke on him; he fled
For the long ship, the evening sea,
Persephone’s poplars
And her dark willow trees.