in her hand; regretful Phaedra recalls her tablet

left behind. One bears a noose, one the sham

of a vain crown; it shames the third to enter

and hide in Daedalus’s heifer. Laodamia

laments two stolen nights of doomed delights

with dead and living lovers; in another place

others, fierce with drawn swords, Thisbe, Canace

and Tyrian Dido loom: one bears her husband’s sword,

the second her father’s, the third her guest’s.

And horned Luna, with torch and starry crown,

strays as once over Latmos’ rocks,

having pursued the sleeping Endymion.

A hundred others dwelling on love’s old wounds

re-live the torments with sweet and gloomy plaints.

Between them reckless Cupid on rattling wings

has scattered the shadows of black fog. All of them

knew the boy and, memory returning,

saw their common offender, though the damp clouds

obscured his belt gleaming with golden studs

and his quiver and the flame of his bright red torch.

They recognize him, though, and try to vent

their vain force on their one foe—met in a place

not his own where he’d wield wings ineffective

in thick gloom—and they press him as a swarm:

they pull him trembling and vainly seeking refuge

into their mass, mid-throng.

A myrtle is chosen,

familiar in that sad grove, loathed as the gods’ revenge—

with this, once, spurned Proserpine tortured Adonis

who thought of Venus. Hanged on its high branch,

chained, hands behind his back, feet bound,

they grant the weeping Cupid no lesser sentence.

Love, accused, is condemned with no trial or judge.

Each, eager to absolve herself of blame,

shifts her own guilt into another’s crime.

All, blaming him, argue the indications

for his justifiable killing. They consider

their attack a sweet vengeance that seeks to redress their grief

each in the way she was ruined. One holds a noose;

one shows the false spectre of a sword; another

a rough cliff, ghost-river, threat of the ocean, a sea

though calm in its depths, raging: some brandish flames

and wield torches hissing flameless. Myrrha opens

her full womb—hurls at the trembling boy her tears

shining as amber drops of a weeping tree. A few intend

mere mockeries but in the guise of pardons,

so a sharp shaft under his pierced skin can draw out

tender blood from which the anemone springs

or their lamps move wanton lights toward the boy.

Even Venus herself, his mother, guilty

of similar sin, enters this fray unafraid.

Not rushing to plead for her surrounded son,

she redoubles his terror and kindles their wavering rage

with bitter goads, and blames her own disgrace

on her son’s crimes, since she suffered the hidden chains—

caught with Mars; since for her shame at her child,

the stigma of Priapus from the Hellespont

was mocked; and Eryx, cruel, and Hermaphroditus

only half-man. Words weren’t enough:

with her red wreath Venus beat the boy, suffering