Koreman Poem 4
A. F. Moritz, "Orpheus" (2000)
“Orpheus”, by Canadian poet Albert F. Moritz, is a retelling of the tragic love story of the relationship between Orpheus and Eurydice followed by a critical analysis of Moritz’s retelling by Orpheus himself.
Moritz is a world famous poet from Ohio who moved to Canada in 1972. His work
is seen as classical, alluding to many Greek deities, and is viewed by many
scholars as beautiful but depressing and dark poetry. The poem begins with
Moritz’s poetic retelling of the tragic love story of Orpheus who, using his “accomplished
song” was able to strike a deal with Hades to let his love, Eurydice, out of
the underworld on the condition that he did not look at her until both were
fully away. Orpheus, excited and paranoid, “glanced around to check if the treacherous gods / had really given him the reward promised” too early and Eurydice disappeared again, but this
time forever. When Moritz finishes his tale, Orpheus explains that Moritz has the
story wrong. He says that he did not seek the company of others, rather he just
chose to sing for the sake of singing and relieving the heart wrenching pain he
felt. However, men and women and anything alive or inanimate were attracted to
his sad song and followed him wherever he went. He ends by explaining that
maybe his death, being torn apart by the female followers of Dionysus, was not
done out of rage but to possess pieces of Orpheus himself.
By A. F. Moritz
He glanced around to check if the treacherous gods
had really given him the reward promised for his accomplished song
and there she was, Eurydice restored, perfectly naked and fleshed
in her rhyming body again, the upper and lower smiles and eyes,
the line of mouth-sternum-navel-cleft, the chime of breasts and hips
and of the two knees, the feet, the toes, and that expression
of an unimaginable intelligence that yoked all these with a skill
she herself had forgotten the learning of: there she was, with him
all song to himself and robbed her of power to open her own
It grew in volume and now seemed to spew from an insane old
mother with one breast
hanging like a huge withered testicle from a rent in her weathered
gown,
who was being watched by a tall woman, copper-helmet-coiffed,
richly suited in salmon colour,
a mythical allusion, since salmon were long extinct in the bays and
rivers here:
songs never brought them anymore. The young restrained breasts
and the old free one
oppressed him equally and he went to live among men, waiting for
the crazy
and the competent to join forces and come for him with their
scissors.
Orpheus listened patiently to my poem and when it quieted he said
to me:
That wasn't it at all. I sang outward from my face to blue spaces
between clouds,
to fern fronds, and men and women sipped my song as you drink
from a stream going by.
What I sang is lost in time, you don't know what it was, all you have
is your own
old stories about me. And if women tore me into pieces, maybe that
only signifies
each one keeps part of my body, which is melody among visible
things.
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