In Ceres’ sacred grove there was an oak,
a forest in itself, hung with wreaths
and garlands, kept promises for answered prayers.
No doubt there’d be a price to pay
by him who chose to scorn the gods,
who made no offerings of incense at the altars,
ignored admonishments
and violated ancient woodlands with his axe.
How it shuddered, trembled, groaned
and moaned. How its leaves and acorns
turned an ashen hue.
From the first wound that he inflicted
spurted blood, the way it spills from sacrificial bulls.
And then, out of the heartwood of that tree,
a voice!
‘I who dwell within these branches,
a nymph whom Ceres loves,
damn you with my dying breath.
There is a punishment at hand.
That sureness is my final consolation.’
Ceres then devised a penance
that would have earned its victim
pity had he not forfeited
all claims to sympathy —
You see, there is, far off, a land
whose fields are icefields,
whose earth knows nothing about
crops and trees, and there the corn goddess
enlisted Famine’s help and had her wrap
her skinny arms around him — one foul embrace —
and breathe into the hollow veins of Erisychthon.
Then, as seas receive the flows of rivers
and are not overfilled, and fires
any heap of fuel and are not satisfied,
he gorged and gorged
and never knew enough.
His words gave way to groans
and moans and still, enough
was not enough, till he began to bite
and gnaw on his own bones
and ate his heart out and himself away.
(after Ovid)