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  "description": "These poems are drawn from a sequence entitled “Ancient Whispers” that utilize themes from classical or Slavic myth. Each poem deals with the irony and vicissitudes of human experience.",
  "path": "/literature/poem-ancient-whispers-a-mythic-poem-sequence-by-f-kevin-murphy/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-01-16T11:14:53.000Z",
  "site": "https://www.ninthheaven.co",
  "textContent": "> These poems are drawn from a sequence entitled “Ancient Whispers” that utilize themes from classical or Slavic myth. Each poem deals with the irony and vicissitudes of human experience, the terrible price Ganymede's father pays for the God's gift of horses, Igor Stravinsky’s exile accompanied by the very spoon with which he was fed as a child, and Persephone’s return from the Underworld as a metaphor for the delivery of a stillbirth. — F Kevin Murphy\n\n* * *\n\n# Ancient Whispers\n\n### A Mythic Poem Sequence\n\n* * *\n\n## Persephone\n\nThat secret plumpness we shared\nBeneath your belt\nIs gone now,\nWith the color in your cheeks.\n\nYour eyes gone\na little gray\nlike January mornings,\nyou are Persephone\nreturned\nwith no gifts from\nbeneath the earth,\nsaying prayers\nthe color of bleeding\nand long as sighs.\n\nYour prayers gone\na little gray\nlike January snow,\nyou are Persephone\nreturned with no crocuses from\nbeneath the mountain of love,\nsinging laments\nthe texture of cottonwood ashes\nand the size of mayfly tears.\n\nYour songs gone\nlike small uprooted flowers,\nyou are Persephone returned\nquite unexpected\nfrom caves where crickets,\nbleeding as they sing,\nfeel for tiny prayers\nalong the damp walls and nine circles\nof your belly.\n\nIt is not the last time\nyou will bleed for your children\nor say the mass\nlike dead poplars in winter.\n\n* * *\n\n## On Ganymede\n\nHow so comely was my Ganymede,\nBorne to Olympus beyond such pain\nTo gain immortality as cupbearer to the gods,\nLost to a loving father,\nAnd now the only man among the moons of Jupiter,\nThe only male lover of Zeus,\nConsort of eagles, in rising glissades,\nThrough the slow dripping rain,\nBearer of mead-bright sweet forgetfulness?\n\nIs the honor of it,\nIs the gift of God’s horses enough\nThat a grieving father’s heart might swell with pride?\nBury your Trojan face in the wet wondrous mane\nAnd try to forget your beautiful son before you ride.\n\n* * *\n\n## Stravinsky’s spoon\n\n> “They change their sky but not their souls\n> who cross the ocean.”\n> Horace, _Odes_\n\n> “The years are cracked\n> and swollen with feeling.”\n> Shaun Griffin, _Snowmelt_\n\nThe very same silver spoon\nWith which his serf and nanny fed him,\nThe little boy his breakfast,\nEscaped with him tucked behind a pocket square,\nHis freedom, justice and compassion in another pocket,\nA flight into music of another race,\nMemories of syrnikis and syrup in another…\nPonchiki and porridge,\nThe fragrance of larch and spruce and aspen\nThrough the open window of a boyhood kitchen.\n\nLeave behind the Scythian soil and soul and substance,\nScythians who ate with dagger and sword,\nWho had no use for spoons or pentatonic forks\nAnd danced a dance of death.\nNo Spring could change the song\nThat chosen exile is still an exile.\nThe golden garden of the firebird simmered in his brain.\nThe violent Scythian rites in Spring,\nScythian circles of Spring,\nDance for the Earth, our Lady of Courage,\nThe virgin dancing into heaven\nThat the Earth may leaf and flower.\nHere the dead no longer speak\nBut still they listen.\n\nLike beads of truth dripping from memory,\nLike raspberry jam on draniki,\nThe glowing dying firebird’s last golden feather drops\nIn that impenetrable garden.\nWith ostentati of freedom and genius,\nHe flew from Russia and the ashes of the firebird\nOn the wings of Pulcinella\nAnd layers of asymmetric rhythms.\nSpoon into my murmuring mouth the last bowl of borscht,\nWhen on the final day\nThe spoon of sorrows clatters in the last empty bowl.\n\n* * *\n\n_Dr. Murphy received his BA and MA in Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins, where he was poetry editor of the Charles Street Review, and his MD at UCLA, where he was editor of Plexus. He subsequently trained in medicine and infectious diseases at the University of Wisconsin, CDC, and University of Texas Southwestern Medical School.\n\nLate in life, he has returned to writing poetry after a career in academic and clinical medicine. He remains clinical professor of medicine at University of Nevada, Reno, School of Medicine. His poetry has appeared in Visions International and Gemini Magazine or is forthcoming in the Pennsylvania Literary Journal and his fiction in The Brussels Review.\n\nHe lives in the rain-shadow of the Sierras, with his wife Rachael, surrounded by spruce, aspens, pines, quail & jays, bobcats, foxes and bears. During Advent, a bear limped across the patio, consuming strawberries left for rabbits, reminiscent of the bear and strawberry tree in Madrid’s Puerto del Sol. This one would only find a strawberry tree on the other side of the mountain._",
  "title": "Ancient Whispers: A Mythic Poem Sequence",
  "updatedAt": "2026-07-13T17:26:11.710Z"
}