This is a short section from a long very free ‘translation’ of Catullus Poem 64 that I have been working on for over twenty years now. The project has many themes and threads, but circles around the idea that the mythological male founders of both Athens and Rome owed their achievements to the love and assistance of ‘foreign’ women whom they would both eventually spurn. The project contains some stand-alone sections, such as this one, written, tentatively in the voice of these forgotten women. I am aware, as Andy Townend points out in the Poetry Rehab prompt that inspired this post https://wordpress.com/read/post/feed/31982590/896768804 that, as a male poet, I am, in so doing, skating on very thin ice.

 

Ariadne’s Ode to Thread

I am not the path.

I am not the guide.

I’m not patient & not

the pattern of your life.

My foot taps to a speedier beat.

*

I am the Singer who plies

her Siren song in subtler thread.

*

I am not the cotton;

I am not the cut cloth.

I am neither sorceress

nor slave.

*

I am not your mother;

I am not your lover;

I am not the wicked witch.

*

I am a grown child

coming out of a maze;

nudging you.

*

I am not the doctor.

I am not the nurse.

I am not the disease.

*

I am the stitchwork

stretching out behind,

before and beyond you,

& the moment in which you pause.

I am time itself.

*

I am the entrance and the exit:

your first step, your way out.