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
Juno was incensed when she learned it:
Jove had impregnate Semele.
Curses
Came bursting out of her throat, but she swallowed them
Hissing; ‘Anger is lost on Jupiter. Only
‘Let me get my hands on that woman.
As sure as I am Juno, the Queen of Heaven,
As sure as I grasp the sceptre
And am Jove’s wife and sister
As sure as I am at very least his sister,
‘I shall destroy that whore.
Let others excuse her. They say she takes nothing
If this taste of his love is all she takes.
They say she’s no more trespassed on my marriage
Than a cloud-shadow crossing a mountain
‘They should know the fact.
His brat is in her womb.
And that is a kind of marriage –
Durable as the life of that creature.
Jupiter’s own child – out of her womb!
‘More than I ever gave him.
A splendid-looking woman –
And so pleased with herself, to be so splendid.
Her pleasure is a delusion.
Her beauty comes at a cost, she will find.
‘I am not the daughter of Saturn
If she does not stumble very soon
Headlong into hell’s horrible river,
Pushed there and shoved under
By the loving caresses of none other
‘Than her darling, the high god Jupiter’.
Juno rose from her throne
Like a puff of smoke from a volcano.
In a globe of whirling light
She arrived at the home of Semele.
Semele
Looked up at a shadow. There
Standing on her threshold, a gummy old woman –
White wisps,
A sack of shrivelled skin propped on a stick,
Bent as if broken backed,
Tottering at each step to stay upright,
And her voice
Quavering like a dying pulse. This figure
Was the very double of Beroe –
Semeles’ old nurse from Epidaurus.
Semele recognised and welcomed
Her old nurse. She never doubted a moment.
Their gossiping began to circle,
Touching at Semele’s swollen belly.
Juno sighed. Her lizard throat trembled.
‘Ah, I pray you are right.
I pray that Jupiter is the sire, as you say.
But who can be sure?
Something about it smells fishy to me.
‘You wouldn’t be the first simple virgin
To hear an unscrupulous seducer
Reveal his greatest secret – that he is a god.
Even if he spoke the truth and you are right –
Even if the babe in your womb is Jove’s –
‘Supposition will not satisfy
The questions
That will occur to the coming child.
That child
Is going to demand real proof.
‘Jupiter should give you real proof
That he is himself. Ask him to face you
Naked as for Juno in heaven,
In all his omnipotnce and glory,
The great god of the triple-headed-sceptre.’
Listening to the twisty words of Juno
Semele heard
Only the purest wisdom.
She asked her divine lover for a love-gift –
A gift she would name only if it were granted.
Jupiter smiled; ‘Whatever you want – name it,
You shall have it. I swear
On the terror who holds all heaven in awe,
The god of hell’s river, you shall have it’.
Semele’s laugh was as triumphant
As she was ignorant
Of the game she was playing.
She laughed
To have won the simple trick
That would wipe her out of existence
So easily. ‘I want to see you’, she said
‘Exactly as Juno sees you when she opens
Her arms and body to you. As if I were Juno,
Come to me naked – in your divine form.’
Too late
Jove guessed what she was asking.
He tried to gag her
With his hand but her tongue
And her lips had hurried it all out
And he had heard it. He groaned.
His oath could no more be retracted
Than her words could be unuttered.
Yes, God wept a little
Gathering the foggy clouds around him
As he withdrew into heaven.
Now he piled above him the purple
Topheavy thunderclouds
Churning with tornadoes
And inescapable bolts of lightning.
Yet he did what he could do to insulate
And filter
The nuclear blast
Of his naked impact –
Such as had demolished Typhoeus
And scattered his hundred hands.
He chose
A slighter manifestation
Fashioned, like the great bolts, by the Cyclops
But more versatile – known in heaven
As the general deterrent.
Arrayed in this fashion
Jove came to the house of Cadmus’ daughter.
He entered her bedchamber,
But as he bent over
To kiss her
Her eyes opened wide, saw him
And burst into flame.
Then her whole body lit up
With the glare
That explodes the lamp –
In that splinter of a second,
Before her blazing shape
Became a silhouette of sooty ashes
The foetus was snatched from her womb.
If this is a true story
That babe was then inserted surgically
Into a makeshift uterus, in Joves thigh,
To be born, at full term, not from his mother
But from his father – reborn. Son of the Father.
And this was the twice-born god – the god
Bacchus.
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