Ariadne

Oh nobody ever sung about this, in their epic iambs,
about a girl, too young to be swept away from the house of her father,
finding herself in the blink of an eye on a naked beach.
White clothes torn, in the still-warm sand
the figure of the man who brought her here,
that man with his golden hair as rays of the sun
which warmed the ponds where she used to wash
her brothers’ clothes with soft soap
and even softer hands, which does not now warm
her stiff body, which does not now melt
the frozen blood nor the salty tears,
lining as pearls the innocent lashes.

No nobody ever sung about this, how the wind
blew in the sails of the leaving boats,
and how the beasts howled in the woods where she found herself.
How she missed her mother, and the laughter
of her friends, but more than that missed the man who loved her,
and left her, leaving her the company of her own
bereaved thoughts, where the world turned upside down
and the gods turned their back
on their loyal followers on earth.

No she was not the heroine in any song of the bard,
playing his lute by the fire and watching with dark and mysterious eyes
over the mountains of long lost dreams.
She never was remembered by the girls
finding new names for love as they watched their men
with the naivety belonging to their age,
for she had not changed history,
had not altered the pattern of the linen woven by Fate
nor caused more than a ripple in the still waters of time,
she had only loved madly without realizing there was a greater end
and even though she gave up her world
could never be part of his, and passed away alone on an unknown island
without any poet recording her dying words.