REPETITIONS SECOND SERIES
Marpessas’s Choice
It was no accident that Marpessa preferred Ida to Apollo,
in spite of her passion for the God, in spite of his incomparable
beauty
which made myrtle bloom and stir as he passed. She didn’t
ever raise her eyes higher than his knee; from his toe-nails
to his knee, what an inexhaustible world, what superb routes
and discoveries — from his toe-nails to his knee.
However,
the last moment of her selection, Marpessa panicked: what
would she do with such a great gift? A mortal, she would
one day age.
She thought suddenly of her comb, with a tuft of white hair,
left on some chair, next to the couch where the resplendent
immortal rested;
she also thought of the fingertips of time on her thighs, her
hanging breasts
before the black metal mirror. Ah, no; and like dead she leaned
on Ida’s mortal shoulder. And he raised her in his arms like
a flag and turned his back on Apollo. But as he was leaving,
almost arrogantly,
something like a crackling was heard, the sound of cloth
ripping (strange sound)
an edge of the flag was caught under the foot of the God.
Libros Libertad 