Tiresias

By Glenn Wright

Oedipus and Tiresias – Les Kurbas and Semen Semdor

In Greek mythology, Tiresias (/taɪˈriːsiəs/; Ancient Greek: Τειρεσίας, romanized: Teiresías) was a blind prophet of Apollo in Thebes, famous for clairvoyance and for being transformed into a woman for seven years. In Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, he serves as the truth-teller who reluctantly reveals that Oedipus himself is the murderer he seeks. He represents unyielding truth against Oedipus's hubris. Tiresias was the son of the shepherd Everes and the nymph Chariclo. He participated fully in seven generations in Thebes, beginning as advisor to Cadmus himself.

Greek gods all have a ruthless sense of humor.
They never miss an opportunity
for payback. My name? Tiresias.
Occupation? Seer. What a joke!
And what a talent they have for consequences!
Usually for some inadvertent crime,
they fire off punishments like baby Eros
shooting arrows, hitting innocents
about as often as actual criminals.
“Justice” they call it. They even have a goddess,
blinded, like me. Look at poor Medusa,
given a fatal glance and snaky head
because Poseidon raped her in a temple.
In my own case, I stumbled upon Athena
bathing in the spring of Hippocrene.
My last sight was her rosy breast, then darkness.
My eyes were gone. I heard my mother wailing,
pleading with the goddess to relent.
Not even Athena could return my vision,
but she gave me gifts of prophecy and long life.

These blessings, I came to understand, were curses.
Although I could not see beloved faces
in front of me, I knew the dooms that lay
in store for them, and nothing could I do
to change their fates, avert catastrophe,
except to speak the truth. I knew, however,
that I would never be believed. My job
was to set up the joke. Fate delivered the punch line.
The rich and powerful sought out my advice,
But they could never follow it. They died,
and often killed the ones they loved the most.
Understandable that they would hate me.
They couldn’t kill me, I had the gods’ protection.
But they invented lies to grieve and hurt me.
One slander was that I became a woman
for seven years, and bore a child, because
I hit some snakes. Another rumor said
I could not walk because my head was twisted
to the rear. How could a blind man see the snakes?
What difference where my face points with no eyes?

Easier to live with total strangers,
but trouble drew me strongly, like a magnet.
I always answered queries with reluctance,
seeing, though blind, the labyrinth of fate,
which, really, always leads to the same outcome—
the hated truth. Heraclitus knew:
“Character is destiny.” Narcissus
had to die attempting self-embrace.
Amphitryon, Creon, Oedipus,
Pentheus, all begged me to pour out
the poisoned truths that killed them, or their loved ones.
I found my own defeat at mountain springs.
The lethal water of Telphusa killed me.
I knew my fate. Was my death suicide?
The only time my prophecies brought comfort
was when I helped Odysseus, the favorite
of gray-eyed Athena, my enemy, find a course
through the wine-dark sea, threading his perilous way
among Poseidon’s monsters, back to his wife
to die, inevitably, upon the ocean’s bosom.

Glenn Wright is a retired teacher living in Anchorage, Alaska, with his wife, Dorothy, and their dog, Bethany. He writes poetry in order to challenge what angers him, to ponder what puzzles him, and to celebrate what delights him.