The arrangement was made without your input,
Let us begin there.  The golden apples, glistening
Rich in the September sun, were ripe for the taking.
The dread dragon of Colchis, whose bladed teeth
Are swords sown in ox-ploughed earth, seeding
Indomitable warriors, and whose unwavering gaze
Transfixes all before him in deathly hypnotics,
Was occupied elsewhere.  Red-feathered griffins
Hoarding boulders of gold in the Rhipaean alps,
And pursuing in flight the Arimaspian thieves, 
Killing with eagle beak and lion claw their one-eyed
Nemeses, have ceaseless besiegement of their own.  
Thus you, Ladon, came to Juno’s mind, sinister breed
Of Echidna, and now here you are, enwrapped,
Encircled, entwined, a Gordian knot intricately woven
Round the tree, baffling any who attempt to deduce
Where the rough-barked trunk begins and you end.

For food, you are hard up.  Shorn sheep and lambs,
Led bleating by some shaking herdsman to the edge
Of your circumscribed garden plot, too often bolt
And skitter away before those unstoppable fangs 
Can close around their soft bellies.  The apples, 
Naturally, are off limits, and would hardly sustain
The might of your puissant limbs.  Nor have you
Den unbefouled, but soil your own nest, for eternal
Guardians are permitted no time for such discretion.  
And even hundred-eyed Argus was not more watchful 
Than you, following every beetle on every stone,
Every bee humming, colliding with fragrant blossom,
Every new blade of grass that has inched up a little 
Higher than the day before.  But sleeplessness wears
On your restless mind. Inseparable now are the dreams
Of your battering-ram tail, your battles victorious,
Swallowing whole cattle, still kicking in your gullet
(And nightmares too, a storm of arrows too violent
For even your hard-bitten scales), from the surreal
Forms that drift past daily as phantasms, fantastical 
Parades of prophecy and remembrance.

When at sunset in glorious purples and billowing 
Orange the Hesperides dance through the orchard,
Aegle beaming, Erytheia in her ruby robes, Hespera
And Arethusa twirling hand-in-hand in whirligigs
Of light, you cannot help but watch.  They seem 
Streaks of color against the azured vault, apricot
And vermilion splashes, and their movements 
Become the movements of wine spilled upon linen,
Slowly soaking and spreading, bleeding into your
Waking dreams full of thirst and envy and hate.  
When the sisters dissolve in the gloaming, bright stars
Have already begun to bedeck the sky.  Now comes
The spoliative time of night, when robbers cloak
Themselves in Nox’s sable folds, and you must be
Ever more vigilant.  An owl snatches silently a vole,
And the distant smell of hearth-smoke twitches your
Nostrils.  But after all, no one approaches, no one
Disturbs this living tableau, serpent coils and coiled
Branches, and no one dares pluck the aureate fruit.

Another morning breaks, and another, and another,
And everyone is convinced you have fully warmed
To this position. When one day, not unlike the last, 
A goddess appears, sister of the nymphs of eventide.
Ego-bruised Eris in her obsidian robes, black flash 
Through the sky, comes sullen and uninvited from 
The white roses of wedded Thetis, hymns to Hymen
For her unsung.  From hours of knocking on doors
Unopened, her knuckles are raw, nails broken.  
Her eyes are bloodshot, her hair distressed, every
Stride she takes towards you a spiteful tromp upon
The ground. Unmoved by your looming spines and
Apocalyptic jaws, she pulls a single gilded globe
From off its sturdy stem.  It is neither the fairest
Of the harvest nor shriveled pippin, but full-fleshed
And sufficient for her fell purpose, a final handsel
For the bride of Peleus. And you feel her seething, 
And your heart breaks in anger, and you shift not once
Except to flick your tongue against her sandaled foot.
Then as if you were never there, she vanishes entirely, 
Gone in the blink of an unblinking eye.

[Eric Brown is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Maine Farmington and current Executive Director of the Maine Irish Heritage Center.  His work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Enchanted Living, The Ekphrastic Review, Mississippi Review, Carmina Magazine, The Galway Review, Black Poppy Review, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, and The Frogmore Papers (shortlisted for the 2023 Frogmore Poetry Prize).]