Poem: ‘The Flaying of Marsyas’
Robin Robertson, 28 April 1994
nec quicquam nisi vulnus erat (Ovid, Metamorphoses, VI, 388)
I
A bright clearing. Sun among the leaves, sifting down to dapple the soft ground, and rest a gilded bar against the muted flanks of trees. In the flittering green light the glade listens in and breathes.
A wooden pail; some pegs, a coil of wire; a bundle of steel flensing knives.
Spreadeagled between two pines, hooked at each hoof...