Poem: Tantalus
“Why are you proud?” spoke the tide, the wind,
And the rock upon the ridge, downward inclined.
“O you moribund trio, what breaks your mind?”
“I flood unwanted, and in hellish thirst my droplets hide.
’Tis me that drench your beard, but scorch the inside.
All lives they abide, I’m the incessant, cunning tide.”
“Deep in me I’m careless of the pomegranate and the fig,”
Danced and danced away the wind on a drooping twig.
“I’m fruitless as your clenching hand, and livelier than a jig.”
“I am the hinderance, and cumber many a your kin,
The very same Sisyphus did upward wrestle, also a king,”
A voice came from the boulder, gently proclaiming.
The tide bade water flow, the wind flickered to and fro,
The rock tipping on the height an eternity ago.
And the old man Tantalus did wistfully spoke,
“Time reels in spindles when my torments repeat.
The former life is never remote, and fresh I recall my feat.
For one soul fixed in the past, how may he come to defeat?
“Mortal needs of my immortal cadaver unanswered,
Torches yet, but my memories burnished and stirred.
’Tis no true torment of toil as Zeus thus rendered.
“Times and times I’ve outwitted the stately Gods.
The trickeries I drew were bolder than the odds,
And grew bolder yet, till I fed my son to the Gods.
“Bolstered pride is my tender regret. Bond to seek,
Caught by action, I found the cause of the weak—
Cause of labour. There’s infinite dignity to my technique!
“How grieve came in drowning tides, O earthly love
And chains. ‘Twere better to choke and resolve?
I fear retirement, till now I’ve soared and strove.
“A calmer peace of modest means? These thoughts form
Like waves of full power and waves of hollow foam.
I am cursed to fancy a path not taken, a new land to roam.
“I’m like you too, rough wind that whirls the cave,
Deceitfully tossing the wonder fruits that I crave.
They mean less to you, than the joy to take and give.
“Pray you and I to our sickly instinct be true,
And our childlike innocence thro’ and thro’
Retains a wayward spirit of a painful hue.
“The destructive force of our fickle will tries the unknown,
Draws matching sufferings, but after the mischiefs sown,
Naively we feel, the recompenses and another idea born.
“Perchance I’m ushered to an unveiled course of action,
While to the rest I’m blind. The rock knows not its stimulation,
But a duty to fall. O foul usage O blurred foresight O deception!
“Better meet a solid death, than to think till the future untold.
My woe my rapture encircle, my eyes staging incidents of old.
Since the day time ceased to be, before me myself unscrolled.
“Behold, a captive, unduly self-examination his crime,
A child of solitude who, in an unwanted lifetime,
Have lived all human types. And like a church bell chime,
“Like a wild shrill, that dies with an echo
But resounds in the ears, I’m ringing still.
Remember the name, Tantalus! And learn my will.”