Perseus

Her sleeping head with its great gelid mass

of serpents torpidly astir

burned into the mirroring shield--

a scathing image dire

as hated truth the mind accepts at last

and festers on.

I struck. The shield flashed bare.

Yet even as I lifted up the head

and started from that place

of gazing silences and terrored stone,

I thirsted to destroy.

None could have passed me then--

no garland-bearing girl, no priest

or staring boy--and lived.

Commentary:Perseus is a really forward straight poem that talks about the death of Medusa. Medusa was a wicked female monster, a Gorgon, generally described as having the face of a hideous human female with living venomous snakes in place of hair. Gazing directly at her would turn onlookers to stone. Perseus, the legendary founder of Mycenae and of the Perseid dynasty of Danaans, was the first of the heroes of Greek mythology whose exploits in defeating various archaic monsters provided the founding myths of the Twelve Olympians. Medusa was beheaded by the hero Perseus, who thereafter used her head as a weapon until he gave it to the goddess Athena to place on her shield, that’s why he input in "Her sleeping head with its great gelid mass" because it refers to the bloody, dead head of Medusa This whole poem is the aftermath of a big fight scene to the death between Medusa and Perseus; it gives you a sense of anger and hatred towards a particular character in this selection. Also you can feel the relief that the long had fought battle is done which gives a feeling of calmness. By reading this poem you I noticed that Robert Hayden wasn't a one track poet that only focused on black history, he expanded his poetry to go as far as the lengths of a whole other culture and religion.