The Death of Cygnus

Praise for Tales from Ovid:

‘A breathtaking book…To compare his versions with the Latin is to be awestruck again and again by the range and ingenuity of his poetic intelligence…He rescues the old gods and goddesses from the classical dictionaries and gives them back their terror. There should be a copy of his book in every school’. John Carey Sunday Times

---

Taken from Tales from Ovid, 24 Passages from the Metamorphoses, published by Faber and Faber Ltd 1997. Copyright Ted Hughes, 1930 -1998

---

Under Troy’s wall, in mid-battle,

Cygnus, the son of Neptune,

Had gone through the Greeks twice

And sent a freshly butchered thousand

Tumbling into the underworld. Opposite –

The chariot of Achilles, through the Trojans,

A tornado through a dense forest,

Had left a swathe of shattered trunks,

Vital roots in the air, a tangle of limbs.

Achilles was looking for Hector.

But Hectors humiliation

Had been deferred a decade into the future.

Meanwhile, here stood Cygnus,

With arrogant scowl and blood -washed weapons,

The champion of the moment. Achilles

Fixed his attention on hm.

‘Think yourself lucky’ he shouted,

‘As you leave your pretty armour to me,

That it was Achilles who killed you.’

Then he drove his team straight at him,

And sent a spear between their white necks

To drop Cygnus under their hooves.

The aim was perfect,

But the blade, that should have split the sternum,

And the heavy shaft,

That should have carried clean through the body,

Bounced off, like a reed thrown by a boy.

Achilles, astounded, skidded his team to a halt.

Cygnus was laughing.

‘I know which goddess was your mother.

The Queen of the Nereids.

But why be suprised if you cannot kill me?

Do you think I wear this helmet

Crested with the tails of horses

For protection? Or that I present this shield

To save my skin? Or tuck myself in a breastplate

Because I am nervous?

I carry these for ornament only,

Just as Mars himself does. Naked,

My skin would still be proof

Against the whole Greek arsenal,

Including yours. This is what it means

To be the son not of a sea-nymph

But of Neptune, lord of the whole ocean

And all its petty deities.’

His spear followed his words –

Achilles, with a gesture, caught it

On the boss of his shield.

The bronze could not stop it.

Nine hardened ox-hides behind the broze

Could not stop it. The tenth ox-hide stopped it.

Achilles shook it off,

And sent a second spear –

It’s shaft vibrating in air –

That bounced off Cygnus, as if off the wall of Troy.

A third as heavy, as fat, and as accurate,

Did no better. Cygnus stood open-armed

Laughing to welcome these guests

That knocked off his chest. By now Achilles

Was groaning with anger

Like the bull that pivots in the arena

Among the scarlet cloaks, his tormenters,

Who cannot be pinned down, but flutter away

From every swipe of his points.

---

Achilles retrieved his failed spears –

And could hardly believe what he found:

The great blades

Sharp and intact as ever.

‘What’s happened to my strength?’ he muttered.

‘Is there something about this fellow that has

spellbound

The power of my arm –

The same arm

That pulled down the wall of Lyrnessus

When I smashed Thebes

Like a pitcher

Full of the blood of the entire populace?

When I dug such trenches with my weapon

The river Caicus drained

Whole nations of their crimson?

Here, too, this arm has slaughtered so many

Their heaped corpses make monuments – pyramids

All along the shore, to remind me

What strength is in it.’

---

As he pondered this, he noticed

Menoetes, one of the Lycians.

Exasperated, to reassure himself,

He hurled a spear, like a yelled oath.

It went through the breastplate of Menoetes

As if through a letter

He happened to be reading.

It drove on,

And clattered the stones beyond as if it had missed –

But splashing them with blood.

As Menoetes –

Like a crocodile straining to get upright –

Beat his brow on the earth towards which he

crumpled,

Achilles recovered the spear. ‘This corpse, this spear

And this arm, I have proved, are perfect Achilles.

Now with the help of heaven’ he cried ‘let Cygnus

Join us in a similar combination.’

And he flung the spear – and it travelled

As if along a beam

That passed through the left nipple of the target.

But at a clang the shaft bowed

And sprang off sideways. Nevertheless

At that point of impact a splat of blood

Brought a cry from Achilles –

A cry of joy, ignorant

That what he saw was the blood of Menoetes.

He leapt onto Cygnus like a tiger,

Hacking at him from every direction

With his aerobatic sword.

The flaring helmet flew off in shards

Like the shell of a boiled egg.

And the shield

Seemed to be making many wild efforts

To escape in jagged fragments.

But Achilles’ blade

Bit no deeper. With a pang of despair

He saw its edge turning, like soft lead,

As he hewed

At the impenetrable neck sinews

Of this supernatural hero.

With a bellow of fury

He lifted his shield

And slammed the boss full in the face of Cygnus,

Spreading the nose like a crushed pear

And denting the skull-front concave

In a shower of teeth. At the same time

He pounded the top of his skull with the sword

pommel,

Left, right, left, right, boss and pommel.

Cygnus staggered backwards,

His head on its anvil, under two giant hammers,

His neck bones splintering, his jawbone lolling to his

chest

Terror and bewilderment had already

Removed the world from Cygnus.

A big rock blocked his retreat, he fell over

Splayed backwards across it,

Like a victim on an altar.

And now Achilles hoisted him

By his helpless legs, and whirled his head

On the diameter of his noble height

Like an axe in a vertical arc

Slam down onto the edged stones.

Then dropped on him, knee staving the rib-cage.

He gripped and twisted the thong –

All that remained of the fled helmet –

Under his chin, a tourniquet that tightened

With the full beserk might of Achilles

Till the head almost came off,

And Cygnus was dead.

---

Achilles’ eyes cleared, as he kneeled there

Panting and cooling.

But now as he undid the buckles

That linked the corpse’s gorgeous armour,

He found his plunder empty.

---

In those moments

Neptune’s word had breathed in off the ocean

And carried away Cygnus

On white wings, their each wingstroke

Yelping strangely – a bird with a long

Undulating neck and a bruised beak

Aimed at a land far beyond the horizon.

---

‘And then a strange thing happened. The twisted, and broken neck of Cygnus began to stretch and to curve. His face narrowed. His mouth stretched and hardened into a beak. White feathers pushed through his white skin.

His father Neptune had taken pity on him and had transformed him into a swan. He beat his feathered arms against the air and the shattered eggshell armour fell from his body. He flew up and up and up into the sky, high above the battlefield.

Every warrior stared up at him.

There was no sound but the sighing and the soughing of his wings. Three times he circled above both armies and then he flew over the white sands, over the masts of the ships, over the blue waves of the sea. And he was gone.’

CSCP Classic Tales, Ovid Metamorphoses, Cygnus

---