Orpheus Leading Eurydice from the Underworld, by Claudia Kessel

Orpheus Leading Eurydice from the Underworld, by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (France) 1861

Orpheus Leading Eurydice from the Underworld

Inspired by the painting above, and Gluck’s “Orfeo ed Euridice,” Act II, Scene I          

My eyes mark no land bleached and sorrow-scraped 
Trees nauseous with translucent ghosts of leaves 
Starched, moonless sky sucked dry of season, shaped 
by dead who slither from rock and cave like thieves. 

I glimpse no acid peat, soil ravenous
to swallow us in its sour, lichened tomb
Misery scouring flesh with brackish dust 
Choking whittled bodies in its turbid womb.

No, only flaxen curls at your neck’s nape
A muscled bicep taut as lyre’s strings
I see your hand grasp my wrist in our escape
Just your valiant fingers, one golden-ringed.
 
Your fear revealed only by your palm’s
perspiring skin, fist clutched as if praying psalms.

I fail to hear the bark of Cerberus
echo off albino trunks of bone 
Wind dry of birdsong, nor dryads’ frothing pus
who squirm and grovel, bellies scraping stone.

I can’t discern the Furies’ savage screams
that with your melody you soothed to sobs
The only sound I hear – the strum of strings 
and your keen tenor’s ring that punctures fog.

The stagnant Styx vomits its putrid pond
Air dense with dead men’s belch and hacking cough
Yet I only smell the sweetness of your sweat, blond 
chest, tendrilled hair, arms tense and soft. 

Pleading Pluto’s throne, I recall your voice’s swoon:
“Her bud was plucked before the flower bloomed.”

I cannot taste the ash of chalky sky 
Where willow’s threadbare leaves weave dusty lace 
My tongue remembers your skin’s salt and rye
Your incandescent mouth, its only taste.

Ankles ignore my gown’s hem soaked with swamp
and my slick toes sucking sphagnum’s slime
I think of reeds scraping your calves as our footsteps stomp
Wind pressing our tattered robes as we climb. 

Save me from this landscape drained of love
Where sallow skin absorbs anemic air
Necrotic hearts molt their flesh like gloves
Where shame grinds lovers’ bones, gnawed raw, stripped bare.

Lead me on, though my pallid hand goes slack
in your firm grip. My darling, don’t look back.

Claudia Kessel 

Claudia Kessel works as a grant writer in Williamsburg, Virginia. Her poetry has been published in Richmond Magazine as a finalist in the 2021 Shann Palmer Poetry Contest, awarded by James River Writers, in the 2024 Poetry Society of Virginia anthology, and in literary journals Ekstasis, Neologism Poetry Journal, Arkana, Literary Mama, Uppagus, Shot Glass Journal, The Bluebird Word (upcoming), The Write Launch (upcoming),and Lullwater Review.