“Take her down, boys,
this fruit is getting over ripe.”
The Attic cowherds chuckled,
and proceeded to cut Erigone’s corpse down
from the tree where it hung
like a broken puppet
or an orb-weaving spider
that clings to the clusters of grapes swollen
by the high summer sun.
By chance one of the boukoloi boys happened to glance down
into the rock-pile well beneath the branches of the white cypress
and saw the bloated, water-logged body of the kindly vintner, her father.
Head askew and mouth contorted into an endless, silent scream.
– his eyes opened and the young man shit himself.
