Weavers

[lnhammer]

    With that they sat down at their looms and started,
the goddess bright with pride, her fingers quick.
The girl tried once to swallow, but refused
to let hand tremble as she passed her thread
from warp to warp, beginning her border vine.

    But twining as a frame to what? Whatever
could she weave? Nothing came to mind as now
she wrung her dried-out sackcloth brain and, here,
no time to plan, for soon the edge was done
and all her yarns laid out. And so she took
the only thought at hand—that sketch beside
her loom, roughed out last night but set aside,
of Leda laughing at a love-struck swan
next to Europa leading the bull by the nose.
A silly thing, but what else could she do?
Without an outward pause, Arachne wove.

    The worst was knowing that today her muse
would utterly refuse to come to her,
this time not just because she’s blocked—the spring
of all her art was here, and fighting her.
Athena’s shuttle flew from side to side,
clicking like a deathwatch in a corner.

    It isn’t every day you meet your fear
embodied only as a god can be.
This was her patron—she who breathed through her
as pictures wove themselves. Each time she lay
her hand to yarn, she feared her soul’s possession,
yet dreaded the white-hot flood wouldn’t come—
and so she always denied the inspiration,
claiming her tapestries were just her skill,
mere craft-work, just in case it might turn true.
But people talk, especially when the work
is art, till rumor’s net snared her in challenge—
now goddess, with the rage of goddess spurned
by mortal, sat here weaving her fate. Just now,
Athena was working on Medusa’s beauty
wracked for boastful pride to horridness.
Arachne didn’t look at that again.

    But now her first two scenes were nearly done
and time to start the next, the same in tone—
perhaps Alcmena slipping from her bed
and husband’s snore to tryst with Zeus?
And Danae thinking gold’s a girl’s best friend.
Relying on that craft she’d learned to catch
what inspiration brought, she picked them out
despite the fist of lead caught in her gut,
not rushing even when Athena, done,
watched with glowers and her hands on knees
for young Arachne to get on with it.

    The day was moments stitched together by
the pluck of rough yarn on her finger tips,
then suddenly her last end was tied off
and she sat up. While stretching out stiff arms
she studied what she’d made, concluded it
the best that she could do, and only then
turned to Athena’s weaving to compare.
Relief unraveled knots that bound her shoulders.
Her own scenes of seductions of the gods
were more alive with fluent characters
than the gods’ official glories wreathed
by static moral tales. Arachne saw
her mortal error, blinked, and slowly smiled.

    Then sudden divine rage, and then the change.
Contracting to a belly caged by legs
that lives on shadowed tatters of true weavings,
her last thought as a mortal was that she
had woven better than the goddess when
they each worked on their own.

—17 February 1996, rev. November 2000

Did I mention that I often do Greek myths?

---L.