To Ariadne

I call to Ariadne, daughter of noble Minos
and shining Pasiphae, grandchild of bright Helios,
beloved bride of ivy-wreathed Dionysos
who bore you to Olympos and made you his wife,
by Zeus’ hand deathless and forevermore young,
to stand in the company of the blessed gods.
On ancient Crete were you born, Ariadne,
there did you take your first breath; on Naxos’ shore
did you begin your true existence at Bacchus’ side;
with him were you honored with feasts and processions,
with him did you join the dance of maenad and satyr.
In days still older, Ariadne, days so bygone
their stories shift like sand in the surf, in those days too
were you lauded, did you receive gifts of sweet honey.
Ariadne, full-hearted and wise, I call to you.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s