The Last Song of Orpheus

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Now strike the golden lyre. Bring forth a ringing chord. Another, louder. Louder yet: a chord to raise the dead. Yes, even that: death itself cannot withstand your music. So strike the lyre; raise the dead; make the rivers weep, Orpheus, and the trees shed their leaves in sorrow.

And strike another chord, an even louder one. Then a softer one, and softer still.

Sing, Orpheus!

Sing of your life, and of the understanding of sacred things that has been given to you, and of the tasks the gods have laid upon you, and of your sufferings in pursuit of those tasks, and of your death. And of the eternal renewal that follows death.

Sing!

This will be my last song, which I make for you, Musaeus my son, telling all there is to tell of my life. My last song, but also my first, for in my end is my beginning, and for me there are no ends and no beginnings but only the circle that is eternity. My sense of time and space is not like yours, for I know, better than you, better than any mortal possibly could, that the serpent, Time, curves round upon itself and grasps its tail in its mouth. I stand outside; I contain everything; I perceive the alpha and the omega and for me they do not have the same order of being and arrangement that they do for you. Past, present, future: for me, as for all those who are in whole or in part divine, they are all one indisseverable thing. My yesterdays are my tomorrows, my tomorrows are my yesterdays. It is decreed that I must forever reenact my past, which is indistinguishable from my future, both of them constituting an eternal present. I have lived, and I have died, and I have lived again, and I have died again, and so it will be, repeated and repeated and repeated, world without end.

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