her shade’s worth is weighed
by Pluto’s solemn eye.
          (a more timely death and
          mortal Minos might have been her judge
          and remembered
          that she was the one who restored to him what kings are wont to want
          by sifting snakes and scorpions from his seed.
          he might have called her then first hero among all the hapless
          women who had known him
          and sentenced her to paradise.)
but the god in gold—rubies for tongue, riches for brains, fingers soaked with rings—
in all his infinite power and all his infinite wisdom,
at least lowers his ear to heed his wife Proserpina’s whispers, and
mercifully
he places her faithless soul not
in the gape-belly of Tartarus,
but in the windless, speechless, wandering meadows
for her to lie dead with the asphodels.
 
years later, her husband’s faithless soul is given to
Elysium.