Venus & Adonis

Adonis is a handsome Greek youth loved by the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite. Ignoring Aphrodite’s advice, Adonis goes hunting and is gored to death by a wild boar. According to Ovid, Aphrodite transformed his blood into a red anemone, a short living plant. The goddess Venus is the Roman version of Aphrodite, and thus, this poem also plays with cross-cultural humor. Shakespeare wrote a poem called “Venus and Adonis.”



Or Us

Orpheus is a poet and musician in Greek mythology whose music, it was said, could charm animals, and make rocks and trees dance. When his wife Eurydice dies of a snakebite, Orpheus visits the underworld to retrieve her. His music puts the ferocious Cereberus to sleep and charms even Hades. Eurydice is allowed to follow him back to earth upon condition that he not look back. Of course, Orpheus looks back, and loses Eurydice. Plunged into grief, he roams the wild, the Maenads tear him apart, and his head floats into a cave to become an oracle. Ovid has an account of the story in Metamorphosis. “The Regrets” is a New Zealand band. 



Poem, Sisyphus

In Greek mythology, King Sisyphus had to roll a massive rock up a steep hill as punishment – it would roll down at once, and he would have to haul it up again and so on throughout eternity. The word “Sisyphean” has thus come to refer to an endless task. In Indian mythology, Brahma is the creator. A day in the life of Brahma is 4.32 billion human years, and so is a night. Brahma’s life of a hundred years (36,000 days) is 311.04 trillion human years, and human life is not manifest during Brahma’s night.