SCYTHON

Ovid isn’t particularly squeamish about

gender fluidity; there’s Tiresias

the soothsayer, who becomes a woman

having struck with his staff two copulating snakes.
Then there’s Hermaphroditus, that’s a well known

story, the nymph Salamicis melting into him

like wax; and Caenis, the dead name of
Caeneus the Lapith, who wanted to be a boy

and fight in wars, caught Poseidon’s eye

who made the transformation, granting

impenetrable skin, so when he battled the centaurs
they had to bury him in pine trunks, but
of all of these, Scython remains an enigma,
mentioned in just a single line: “Neither shall I

tell you of Scython, sometimes a man, sometimes

a woman” – that’s all, and yet so intriguing.

One likes to imagine they were founding hero
of the Scythians and kept the peace
as envoy to Amazon and Gargarean, dancing between
the poles of male and female, proudly, on a whim.