Marsyas by Paisley Rekdal

Marsyas 

We think Marsyas is the only one

who changed, stepping forth

from the forest to challenge Apollo, staring at the god

 

he could never rival as if

into a harshly lit mirror, each recoiling

 

at what he found there: the jealousy knifed

inside the mortal talent, the cold perfection

threaded through with rage.

 

But then the muses stirred behind them.

And Marsyas, out the painful human wish

to be admired, cannot help but play.

 

And afterwards, the cutting,

the stripped corpuscles, the ruined mouth—

 

     Only after his victory would Apollo reach out

and clip three small muscles from the satyr’s throat

and shoulders, and dry them on a rock, and string them between

the curved horns of his lyre. Then the god

 

would pull a song

through that tender sinew, telling himself

 

it was not the crying of one

who’s lost everything he loves but the god’s

own singing that he heard, and after which

the muses strained, because it was the song

 

of someone who knew what it was like

to be alive, which the god could not bear

to know, or to stop playing.

 

And so Apollo, unthinking, binds himself

to Marsyas: the god taking from his rival

 

fear and desire, the satyr hardened by the god’s

cruel skill, until both songs

 

writhe inside each other, sung

by one who cannot understand death, and so

 

never understands what he plays,

knowing only how his hand

trembles over the plucked muscle:

 

adding, he thinks, something lower to the notes,

something sweeter, and infinitely strange.