by Donald S. Yarab
In myth, the Furies pursue the guilty. In this meditative poem, they do not chase or condemn, but pause—witnesses to memory, silence, and the uncertain balance between reckoning and reprieve. Beneath the yew, they wait—not gone, not appeased, but listening.
Oil on canvas, 91 × 71 cm
London, Helly Nahmad Gallery
“Necdum illum aut trunca lustrauerat obuia taxo / Eumenis…”
— Statius, Thebaid VIII. 9–10“Nor yet had the Fury met him, bearing the lustral yew…”
— Statius, Thebaid VIII. 9–10 (adapted translation)
As darkness descends and light abates,
The Furies wake at the turning of fates.
No horn is blown, no omen flies—
Only the hush where judgment lies.
They come not crowned, but cloaked in ash,
With broken names and eyes that flash.
Not wrath alone, but what endures—
The weight of memory that never cures.
They walk where silence used to sleep,
Where secrets rot and letters bleed.
The breath of dusk is cold and tight—
A wound reopens in the night.
By yews they pause, where death takes root,
In soil grown thick with ash and fruit.
The bark is split with silent cries,
The rings record what speech denies.
They do not speak, but still the trees
Murmur of trespass in the breeze.
The wind forgets its mournful tone—
As if the world waits to atone.
A shadow stirs, but does not fall;
A light withdraws, but leaves a call.
No hand is raised, no doom is cast—
And yet the pulse runs through the past.
The air is thick with what might be:
A breaking, or a turning key.
The Furies halt—but do not sleep.
And from the yews, the silence… deep.
So still they stand beneath the yew—
The Furies veiled in dusk’s soft hue.
Its needles dark, its berries red,
It shelters both the quick and dead.
They neither strike nor turn away,
But hold the hush at break of day.
Their eyes are dark, their purpose blurred—
As if they wait to hear a word.
Northcoast Antiquarian 