The Paris Review

A vast crowd, so many, rushed to the riverbank:

Women and men, famous greathearted heroes,

The life in their hero bodies now defunct,

Unmarried boys and girls, sons whom their fathers

Had had to watch being placed on the funeral pyre;

As many as the leaves of the forest that,

When autumn’s first chill comes, fall from the branches;

As many as the birds that flock to the land

From the great deep when the season, turning cold,

Has driven them over the seas to seek the sun.

They stood beseeching on the riverbank,

Yearning to be the first to be carried across,

Stretching their hands out toward the farther shore.

But the stern ferryman, taking only this one

Or this other one, pushes the rest away.

Aeneas cries out, wondering at the tumult,

“O virgin, why are they crowding at the river?

What is it that the spirits want? What is it

That decides why some of them are pushed away,

And others sweep across the livid waters?”

The aged priestess replied: “Anchise’s son,

True scion of the gods, these are the pools

Of the river Cocytos, and this the Stygian marsh,

Whose power it is to make the gods afraid

Not to keep their word. All in this crowd are helpless

Because their bodies have not been covered over.

The boatman that you see is Charon. Those

Who are being carried across with him are they

Who have been buried. It is forbidden to take

Any with him across the echoing waters

That flow between these terrible riverbanks