The Oracle said Yes

I made a pilgrimage to Delphi, walked in the footsteps of my ancestors, culturally if not biologically. Humanity is one unbroken chain, immortal in our cussed tenacity to survive and multiply. One would wait hours after having travelled weeks to gain an audience with the priestesses of Apollo, perched on a marble egg above a crevice in the mountain. There is no more oracle, there is barely the shell of a temple, but I found a place that felt close and asked my yes or no question. 

Will I have a love so epic as to make the gods jealous - like the love that Alcyone and Ceyx had for each other?

The lovely Alcyone was the daughter of Aeolus, the Greek god of the wind, and her mother was either Enarete or Aegiale. She was the devoted wife of Ceyx, King of Trachis, in central Greece. Ceyx ruled his kingdom with justice and in peace. Alcyone and Ceyx were admired by gods and mortals alike for their great physical beauty, as well as the profound love they had for each other. They were so happy in their marriage that they used to often playfully call one another Zeus and Hera. This infuriated the chief of the gods who regarded it an audacity. 

Zeus waited for the proper time to punish the arrogant couple who dared to make themselves comparable to gods. Ceyx was still in mourning over his brother's death and deeply troubled over some ominous signs that had observed. So, he decided to consult the oracle of Apollo at Carlos in Ionia (Western Anatolia). Alcyone, however, tried to dissuade her husband from his decision to travel through the dangerous seas to consult the oracle. She reminded him of the danger from the fury of the winds which even her father, the god of the winds, often found difficult to control: she put pressure over her husband to take her along with him. But Ceyx wouldn't put his beloved wife through unnecessary danger. 

Alcyone watched with a bad feeling as the ship carrying her husband was getting away from the harbour. The punishment Zeus, the chief god, decided this was an opportune time to punish the couple for their sacrilege. He launched a thunderbolt that raised a furious hurricane engulfing the ship which began to sink. Ceyx realized that the end had come for him and, before he got drowned, he prayed to the gods to allow his body be washed ashore so as to enable his beloved Alcyone to perform the funeral rites. 

As Ceyx gasped his last breath, his father Esophorous, the morning star, watched helplessly, shrouding his face with clouds, unable to leave the heavens and rescue his son. The atonement The lovely Alcyone waited for her husband for a long time, praying continually to the gods, especially Hera, queen of the gods, for the safe return of Ceyx. Hera felt profound sorrow for the tragic fate of Ceyx. She sent her messenger Iris, goddess of the rainbow, to look for Hypnos, the god of Sleep and comforter of the afflicted, to whom was assigned the mission of gently informing Alcyone about the death of her husband. Hypnos, in his turn, entrusted the mission to his son Morpheus, an expert in forming apparitions. Morpheus created a life-like specter of Ceyx which revealed to Alcyone the tragic circumstances concerning the shipwreck and death of her husband. In profound grief, Alcyone ran to the seashore beating her breasts and tearing her garments. She suddenly beheld the body of a man that had been washed ashore. Coming closer, she realized it was the body of her beloved Ceyx. After performing the last rites and unable to continue living without her husband, Alcyone threw herself into the sea and got drowned, determined to join her husband in the land of the dead. 

The gods on Olympus were profoundly affected by the tragic fate of Alcyone and Ceyx, as well as their wonderful love for one other which not even the frosty hands of death could extinguish. In order to atone for his rash action that was responsible for this tragedy, Zeus transformed the couple into the Halcyon birds (kingfisher). The myth lives till today through a phrase The phrase halcyon days owes its origin to this beautiful myth of Alcyone and Ceyx. According to the legend, for tow weeks every January, Aeolus, father of Alcyone, calms down the winds and the waves so that Alcyone, in the form of a kingfisher bird, can safely make her nest on the beach and lay her eggs. Hence, the term "halcyon days" comes to signify a period of great peace and calm. 

Source: www.greeka.com

hunger

I Crave Your Mouth, Your Voice, Your Hair

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair. Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets. Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps. I hunger for your sleek laugh, your hands the color of a savage harvest, hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails, I want to eat your skin like a whole almond. I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body, the sovereign nose of your arrogant face, I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes, and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight, hunting for you, for your hot heart, like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

Pablo Neruda

men in my hair

Always

I am not jealous of what came before me. Come with a man on your shoulders, come with a hundred men in your hair, come with a thousand men between your breasts and your feet, come like a river full of drowned men which flows down to the wild sea, to the eternal surf, to Time! Bring them all to where I am waiting for you; we shall always be alone, we shall always be you and I alone on earth, to start our life!

Pablo Neruda

to be a saint

St. Elizabeth

BY ARACELIS GIRMAY

I run high in my body

on the road toward sea.

I fall in love. The things

the wind is telling me.

The yellow sky quiet

in her quiet dress.

Old birds sending news

from the reddish hills.

& the one hawk flying

in the distance overhead.

That hawk is what

the wind says. In love

with the heaving

of my peacock chest,

with my lungs, two wings,

such flying things,

but mine for now, just for now

as I open my stride

above the good, dirt road,

fall in love with the mustard

& coriander dust,

& the far, far mountain

beveled by light, by rain,

the easy eye of the sun, now,

smoke floating across the hillside

like a face I knew once very well.

Very well, I fall in love

with the flowers & the wash

hung like prayer flags, see,

in red Juanita's yard. In love

with the earth the color of earth. In

love with the goats, their bellies & hooves,

& the goat mouths bleating

as they greet me on the road.

I fall in love. How they wear

their strange & double-eyes.

How they do not blink

or laugh at me

or say a thing I understand

when I ask them in my English,

because they circle around my feet,

as if they always knew me,

Were you my children once?

Did I know your names?

Oh, little magics?

Little children?

let the lover be

Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy,

absentminded. Someone sober

will worry about things going badly.

Let the lover be.

-Rumi