Ocyrhoe

Meanwhile the centaur Chiron swelled with pride:

he now was foster-father of a child

of godly stock: and he was glad to face

the task of raising Aesculapius—

a task but, too, an honor.

 

Latin [615–34]

 

            Now the daughter

of Chiron comes; her reddish hair falls thick—

a mantle—on her shoulders. She was born

to Chiron by the nymph Chariclo on

the banks of a swift river, and her mother

had called the child Ocyrhoe (the Greek

for “rapid flow”). The girl was quick and apt:

she’d learned her father’s art; but not content

with that, she also learned prophetic chants.

And when she saw her father’s ward, her soul

was seized by vatic frenzy; there—enclosed

within her breast—a godly fire glowed.

She cried:

 

         “O child, grow strong! You are to be

the healer of the world: how often shall

your skills save mortal bodies’ life and health!

And you shall have the right to resurrect

the dead, a gift that Jove will then resent;

and when you’ve done this once (though he’s your own

grandfather), he will hurl his thunderbolt

to thwart your doing it again; and you,

a god, shall then become a bloodless corpse;

but from a corpse you shall be changed once more

into a god: the fate you’ve known before

is to repeat itself.

 

            “You, too, dear father,

fated from birth to live eternally,

shall one day long to die; for you shall be

tormented by a dreadful serpent’s venom

that, through a wound, will spread throughout your body—

an endless agony—till, mercifully,

the gods free you from immortality;

and death can take you. The three Fates will splice

the thread of what was once your endless life.”

 

Latin [635–54]

 

But there was more she had to prophesy.

And from her deepest heart Ocyrhoe sighed,

and tears ran down her cheeks; she said: “The Fates

have checked my speech. I am allowed to say

no more; they will not let me use my voice.

What good was there in having learned this art,

if now it only draws the wrath of gods

against me? Would I not be better off

without the power to predict the course

of days to come? I can already sense

that they are stripping all my human semblance;

I am already pleased to feed on grass;

and I already feel the urge to dash

across wide fields: a mare—that is the form

I now am taking on, a body like

my father’s! Must I change in full? And—why?

My father’s form is only half equine!”

 

The last part of her speech was scumbled, blurred,

and soon one lost all sense that there were words

at all: her voice did not yet seem a mare’s—

more like the voice of one who mimes a mare.

But soon her whinnying came clear and true;

along the ground her arms began to move

like legs; her fingers fused, and her five nails

were wrapped in horn: her hands were now light hooves.

Her hair, which had hung loose across her shoulders,

now, on her right, became a flowing mane.

Her voice, her image—both had suffered change;

and, too—as Hippe—she gained a new name.