Circe
There was this about her:
She liked pigs better than men;
The more swinish the creature,
The greater the perversity of that relationship,
The more pleasure in the association.
And this was the mainstay of her existence,
A kind of magnification
Of the most banal aspects of our so-called civilization.
It was really her way to maintain control,
Her feeling, that as a woman,
The slightest slip would send her plummeting:
Over the edge, into the abyss
Wherein the female of our species
Often found itself configured.
*
Why should the gods protect me?
What have I done to deserve salvation?
I wandered, disconsolate, across flowered fields,
Thought of the wife I had left behind,
Of the infant son I had deserted before he knew my face.
There was a vision there, on that island,
As incongruous as it was emollient,
Of my father’s grandfather, Hermes Argeiphontes.
He spoke, and he gave me good medicine
Which he picked out of the ground,
Black at the root, but with a milky flower.
The gods call it Moly; you mortals: snow drop.
This will keep her from enchanting you.
Having enlightened me, he laughed, and was gone.
That was the bargain. The swine were men,
The seasons passed, and I shared her bed.
Until they said, It is time to go.
And we sailed across the bright sea, towards home.
see Note re Snow Drop