shriek by shriek the cavern where Pan pipes
shaded rape childbirth and exposure
it seemed appropriate when the son was ripe
and the girl older to bring closure
to that separation from each other
yet the two of them latched on Gorgon’s blood
he who had never known a mother
she who’d never mothered - Pan chews his cud
tearer and mender of discordant song
once the cord and omphalos were severed
more harm had been done correcting the wrong
Pan resumes - lives bunged out of measure
limbs and organs that never fed as one
make a chimaera of mother and son
Oxford
19 July 2018
Pan is referred to by the Chorus in Euripides’ “Ion” over ll. 492-505. Pan and the dead ( but still lethal) Gorgon are presences in the play. An omphalos is a navel in Greek but it was also a metanym for the Shrine at Delphi, where the boy worked, and met his mother, who had come with her husband to consult the oracle.
I am not ascribing the agency to Pan which belongs to Apollo and Athena in the play. Pan is mimetic. Beware of the Loeb translation of this chorus. Pan’s pipes do not make a ” shimmering sound”. The Greek refers to alternating shrieks.