Sometimes it stays with you

Destiny, not guilt, was enough
for Actaeon. It is no crime
to lose your way in a dark wood.
It happened on a mountain where
hunters
had slaughtered so many animals
The slopes were parched red with
the butchering places.
When shadows were shortest and
the sun’s heat
hardest
Young Actaeon called a halt:
‘We have killed more than enough
for the day…’
Actaeon, “making a beeline home from the hunt” stumbled on the bathing place.
He couldn’t help himself. He stared at the goddess’ naked body, and Diana
“blushed like a dawn cloud” and reached for a weapon. She had only water:
So she scooped up a handful and
dashed it
into his astonished eyes, as she
shouted:
“Now, if you can, tell how you saw
me naked”.
That was all she said but as she
said it
Out of his forehead burst a rack of
antlers
His neck lengthened, narrowed,
and his ears
folded to whiskery points,
his hands were hooves.
His arms long slender legs.
His hunter’s tunic
slipped from his dappled hide.
With all this
The goddess
Poured a shocking stream of panic,
terror
Through his heart like blood.
He had become a stag. Bounding away,
Actaeon was caught by his fellow hunters:
He wished he were among them
Not suffering this death but observing
The terrible method
Of his murderers, as they knotted
Muscle and ferocity to dismember
Their own master.



credit: Ted Hughes, reteller of 25 of Ovid's tales, and Anthony Day of the LA Times bringing it to me twelve years ago. Sometimes stuff rocks your world. This was one of them for me.