The Flaying of Marsyas
Paul Burgess
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It started as a lovely, festive time,
Marsyas piping everyone a tune
to pair with dancing, drink, and witty rhyme
beneath a cloudless sky and glowing Moon.
But soon Apollo came to play his lyre,
and drunk Marsyas, master of the flute,
agreed to duel the god who’d soon require
a knife to peel the mortal’s flesh like fruit.
Though hanging by his feet and being flayed,
Marsyas found the moment bittersweet.
He knew the soaring wonders that he’d played
had made Apollo fear his own defeat.
The gruesome way Marsyas slowly died
was proof he’d wounded vain Apollo’s pride.
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Previously published in The Ekphrastic Review (2025).
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Paul’s notes: ​​“In the early 2000s, I wrote an ekphrastic poem about Titian’s Flaying of Marsyas, a depiction of Apollo flaying a musician alive at the end of a musical competition between the two. The original poem was a stiff, archaic exercise, and the interpretation I gave the painting was embarrassingly unimaginative. Earlier this year, I read the poem for the first time in many years and realized that my worldview had changed enough to completely alter my interpretation of the painting and view of the myth; while keeping some of the original imagery, I rewrote most of the poem in more contemporary language and transformed my stuffy piece about hubris into a celebration of the artist and a reflection on the pettiness sometimes shown by the powerful. The painting is centuries old, and the myth is over two millennia old, but the authoritarian impulse is still to elevate the slightest perceived challenge to the level of crime and to punish it with billion-dollar lawsuits, ruined careers, death threats, or other sorts of public flaying.
“(We might call the “cloudless sky” a bit of poetic license.)“
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Paul Burgess is the sole proprietor of a business in Lexington, Kentucky that offers ESL classes in addition to English, Japanese, and Spanish-language translation and interpretation services. He has recently contributed work to Blue Unicorn, The Road Not Taken, Light, The Orchards, Snakeskin, Pulsebeat, The Ekphrastic Review, and several other publications. Paul’s blog is here and readers are welcome to contact him via this link.
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Pic credit: Titian, The Flaying of Marsyas (via Wikipedia)
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