My name is Charlotte and I am an undergraduate English student from the University of Exeter. I decided to write about something that has always interested me but I had yet a chance to write about — Greek mythology. This poem recounts a moment between Heracles and Geryon, as Heracles attempts to complete his 10th labour. As a reminder, Heracles had to perform 12 “heroic labours” as punishment for murdering his wife, Megara, and their 5 children. As his 10th labour, Heracles had to obtain the red cattle of the red giant Geryon. This follows the perspective of Geryon, and asks the question: how do we determine who is the hero and who is the monster?

As the arrow soared through air And split his skull in two.
Geryon saw, for the first time,
An endless wash of celestial blue.

And as the sky shifted, and swung overhead,
he felt the dry earth beneath him make his bed,
And as he tried to talk, but hacked on copper red,
He felt the bloom within him of a flowering dread.

He heard as rock shifted underneath new weight,
To be of the man who’d come to seal his fate,
Each step like thunder, a reverberating hum.
He dared to look up, eyes to be burned by sun.

A hero bathed in golden light,
Dusted by beads of earth, swept by winds of might,
Skin kissed by the deathless gods from clouded home,
Man of chiseled arms, lowering a burning black bow.

But it was in those eyes, a deep ocean of blue,
Son of Callirrhoe saw his end was due.
To be smothered slowly from this world
Like dying fire against morning dew.

In his brief moments of pain and breath,
Geryon recalled his mother’s words of Fate.
And if Jove had made it so,
that this boy of red wings and red home,
turn the red earth beneath him bloody,
And let man of crazed mind and blue eyes go.

This Man who will steal these cattle,
And journey far, burden trials and obstacles of fate,
Forging a bloody key for immortal gate.
But he – with life pouring into sordid earth –
will be the least of this hero’s worth.

With lifted arm,
he reached, reached, and begged to grasp
A single sliver of the man who stole
his breath and life, so fast

But he touched no Man,
only felt bitter air singed
Of fate foretold, loss, and pernicious doom,
As this hero exits, humming a soldiers’ tune.