From Dark Harbor
by Mark Strand
I
When after a long silence one picks up the pen
And leans over the paper and says to himself:
Today I shall consider Marsyas
Whose body was flayed to an excess
Of nakedness, who made no crime that would square
With what he was made to suffer.
Today I shall consider the shredded remains of Marsyas
What do they mean as they gather the sunlight
That falls in small pieces through the trees,
As in Titian's late painting. Poor Marsyas,
A body, a body of work as it turns and falls
Into suffering, becoming the flesh of light,
Which is fed to onlookers centuries later.
Can this be the cost of encompassing pain?
After a long silence, would I, whose body
Is whole, sheltered, kept in the dark by a mind
That prefers it that way, know what I'd done
And what its worth was? Or is a body scraped
From the bone of experience, the chart of suffering
To be read in such ways that all flesh might be redeemed,
At least for the moment, the moment it passes into song.
MARSYAS was a Phrygian Satyr who invented the music of the flute. He found the very first flute which had been crafted but cast away by the goddess Athena who had been displeased by the bloating of the cheeks. Marsyas later challenged the god Apollon to a musical contest but lost when the god demanded they play their instruments upside-down in the second round--a feat ill-suited to the flute. As punishment for his hubris, Apollon had Marsyas tied to a tree and flayed alive. The rustic gods then transformed him into a stream.
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