MYTHIC FRAGMENT When the stern god approached me with his gift my fear enchanted him so that he ran more quickly through the wet grass, as he insisted, to praise me. I saw captivity in praise; against the lyre, I begged my father in the sea to save me. When the god arrived, I was nowhere, I was in a tree forever. Reader, pity Apollo: at the water’s edge, I turned from him, I summoned my invisible father—as I stiffened in the god’s arms, of his encompassing love my father made no other sign from the water.
