Artemis and Actaeon

[Artemis was the goddess of the hunt, and magic, and the moon. Some say she hated men, because she had asked her father Zeus to let her always remain unmarried, "a virgin." Of course, in that time a virgin was simply a woman who belonged to no man....not necessarily one who did not like them.

Actaeon was a great hunter, a worshipper of Artemis, and a favorite of hers for his devotion to hunting and nothing else. He had the misfortune to stumble upon the goddess' bathing place: she turned him into a stag, and his own hounds tore him apart. Many writers judge Actaeon's transformation as cruelty on Artemis' part: but that may reveal more about them than about her.]


Here was a secret wall of diamonds,
Slacking into calm.
Beneath lay bedrock clean.
Brightness, blackness, merged and loved.
Artemis hungered for this place.

Not much they tell of Artemis and luxury,
And certainly what was lush to her
Aphrodite or Hera would dismiss.
But, here, in this noisy hole,
Did Artemis yield, and relax.

Here she retreated , when morning bulged,
And bear-shades and stag-shades receded
Down tunnels to silence and Styx.
(They struggled, each, the black river—and, with shaft shards sparking in hearts and eyes and guts,
like paper targets vexed the virtuous dead)

Sheltering from the forenoon,
Nightcool water was Artemis' sheath--
Though the cave roof had holes, and could not silence her brother the sun's
Unceasing unmusical yell.
She laughed, and indulged.
Rock sang bright by her elbow: she dabbled in the splashes and smoothed the slick ledge.
Down the cave, up a terrace of rock, nymph Tynet was rifling through the food.
Artemis closed her lids and smiled.

Another, Celosia the Powerful, arrived on schedule: she laved and punished her goddess's shoulders with oil.
Artemis rested back, and groaned thanks.

And when Artemis moved at last around to sit in the shallows,
Jonessa, whose arms were superior to Celosia's, but whose hands were fat spiders dancing-- it was who she braided up her lady's hair.
Into those cloth-of-bronze tresses she wound
Pheasant and hawk feathers, with strings of turquoise and amethyst beads.
Jonessa sweated like a smith, rolling her deity's cable-heavy strands:
But when she was done, the gems and plumes crested like foam.
It would all, of course, be torn apart in the next night’s hunt—
Feathers flung wide, stones melting into raindrops as they caught on the petals of trees--
But now, through the heat of day,
Her lady would meditate in stillness, like a pearl, a parchment, or a war—
And Jonessa’s art, for those hours, would be glory, would hold.

All was peace, and not a one that company—
Not Celosia, nor Jonessa, not Tynet, not the twins—
Not a one of those nymphs, gossiping, minding their hounds and their weapons and gear,
And not the goddess herself, who some call negligent, criminal, for not having foreseen--
Not one of all these considered that a mortal might uncover this spring.

The events of that morning are well-recorded,
According to each scribe's bent.
And the point—well, that's seldom whole and right.

Actaeon was a man after Artemis’ own heart.
If there was any deity he worshiped, she was it.
True, true-- he might have imagined her unpriceable body,
Some late morning as he lay in bed--
When he should have had better things to do--

But his passion was to boost the name of this lady who evangelized not hearth, but hunt.
Maybe, yes, some late morning,
He thought he'd like to have one that could be her like.
But those few esteemed colleagues he had so far met
Slid silk on smelly silk with their female, fellow, own.

Ha, Artemis? O, the secrets between the stars.

Now that fine morn,
He was trudging, coated and caked in blood,
And thinking how much his lady would have been pleased.
He had dispatched many beasts that night,
Down to that ponderous, that most impenetrable dark--
And not a one had time to cry out,
Not a one made a sound.
His aim had been crystal, like her stars.
His followers he left behind, busy dehiding the kill.

Unclasping damp straps,
Actaeon meandered.
He tallied in his mind the coins he would need to charge for all the meat and hide and fur,
And what he could pay his boys out of what he figured to get.
If he had been paying attention not to the accounting but to the perfume, to the light,
To the air like cobwebs thickening into brocade—
If he had harked to the rainbow laughter massive as silk,
Perhaps he could have been safe.

But when he looked up, all was lost.
His heart stared back at him, stripped bare.

Celosia and Jonessa grabbed for cloaks
Tynet and the twins, they went for swords.
And Artemis?
She smacked the water so that it blasted in his face.
Can’t go anywhere, she thought--damn mortals right behind.

Her blow was so powerful that he was by water veiled.
Below its blanket, time stopped.
He thought,
I’m doomed.
No god is thwarted and lets a mortal scamper off unchanged.
Below its blanket,
He gave his soul to fear.

Fear drilled his heart like a root and shot forth blooms: the water did bid them grow.
Their throats dilated, blew open their lips,
And Actaeon heard them yell:
Pick your penalty:
Like what does your punishment look?

That day’s great stag—
It, who had waded like Artemis into dark and diamonds,
But discovered itself in a pool of hounds
And could not sink
And could not get out—
That was the water fear found.

The blast of water broke.
From Actaeon’s forehead sprouted fear.
Antlers branched, and Actaeon’s Olympian body
Hunched low on scraping hooves.

Even the nymphs were horrified.
The goddess gaped, her hand now cupping air.
One must be so careful, you know,
So careful about one’s aim.
So excruciatingly, breathlessly,
Compulsively careful about one's every single aim.
She stared—shocked--
Where a second before there had been a man.

The stag fled.
Tunic and straps, that might have saved him with their smell,
Splayed on the cavern floor. Tynet picked up a belt and examined its work.

Rock-scarred hooves clattered toward what remained faith,
Clattered toward what they still vouched for as safe.
Behind,
Artemis' voice was a whisper--dust across lips of stone.
“Tell,” the goddess urged. “Tell. Tell, if you can.”

Jonessa, who through all this still had the goddess by her hair and a feather and an amethyst string,
Hauled her lady down to sit.

In seconds, the forest shook the cave with sound.
Tynet tossed the belt aside.

“Good voices, those hounds,” commented one of the twins.