THE DEATHS OF NIOBE'S SONS

THE DEATHS OF NIOBE'S SONS
From Ovid's Metamorphoses

139 Niobe's sons were out there
140 Astride gaudy saddle-cloths,
141 Their gold-studded reins bunched in their fingers,
142 Managing muscular horses.

143 Ismenus, Niobe's eldest,
144 Was reining his horse hard,
145 Bringing it round in a tight circle
146 When his spine snapped
147 And a bellow forced his mouth open
148 As a broad-headed bright-red arrow
149 Came clean through him.
150 The reins fell loose. For a moment
151 He embraced the horse's neck, limply,
152 Then slid from its right shoulder.

153 Sipylus looked wildly upward.
154 He heard a quiver rattle high in the air
155 And urged his horse to a full gallop---
160 But it was no good.
161 The god's arrow was already there,
162 The feathers squatting in the nape of his neck,
163 The long shaft sticking from his Adam's apple.
164 He bowed
165 Over the horse's mane and simpl
 166 Rolled on forward and down
167 Under the hooves
168 That churned his limbs briefly, scattering the blood.

169 Phaedimus was no luckier.
170 With his brother---, Tantalus---
173 He had left the horses. These two
174 Were doing what they loved best---
175 Wrestling together, with oiled bodies,
176 And were locked chest to chest,
177 Each straining to fold the other backwards
178 When the arrow
179 From the unerring bow of Apollo
180 Slammed through both, and nailed them together.
181 Each thought his backbone broken by the other.
182 With a single groan they collapsed,
183 Crumpling sideways
184 A monster with eight limbs, clawing for life,
185 Dying a single death from the one wound.

186 Alphenor could not understand
187 What was happening.
188 He hammered his chest with his fists and tore at it
189 With his fingers. He tried
190 To lift his two brothers back on their feet---
191 But as he struggled there, with all his strength
192 Braced under their dead weights,
193 A forked barb of Apollo
194 Touched him beneath his left shoulder-blade.
195 It came out under his ribs, on the right,
196 With a rag of his liver.
197 He felt his heart kicking against the shaft
198 As he dropped into darkness
199 Beneath his brothers.

200 Long-haired Damasichthon was n
ot so lucky
201 To escape so smoothly.
 202 The arrow that brought him down
203 Had gone in behind the knee.
204 He flung back his head,
205 Showing heaven a mask of agony
206 As he made one huge effort to wrench
207 The barbs from their anchorage
208 Behind his tendons.
209 The second arrow found him in that posture.
210 It went in
211 At the base of his throat, in the fork
212 Of his clavicle---
213 And drove straight down through the aorta.
214 A column of blood
215 Ejected it and he fell
216 Like a broken fountain---
217 The blood jetting in twisting and showering arcs
218 From his flailing body.

219 Ilioneus was last.
 220 He dropped to his knees and lifted his arms---
 221 'You gods,' he cried, 'all of you, hear me,
222 Spare me, protect me.'
223 But ignorant of his mother's folly
224 He was ignorant
225 Which gods to appeal to.
226 Apollo the Archer, touched with pity,
227 Regretted the arrow
228 That his eye was following.
229 But the wound was instantly fatal,
230 Surgical, precise, minimal---
231 It stopped his heart before he felt the impact.