Orpheus and Eurydice

For the full story of Orpheus and Eurydice see here.
The image is from The British Museum via Wikipedia.

Carried - but by what,
if not by dream? - until
I looked beyond the borders of
our time and space, beyond
the end of our continuum
where is the entrance
into Hades,
a lower quantum world
than earth - but made of earthly stock.

My Eurydice, long fallen
to the quick but agonising 
death of serpant bite (though I,
would sure have sucked the wound
of all its poison gladly - yeah,
until the body rotted -
but they pulled me from her,
using, in the pulling, all their
brute strength) and 
being now in sleep and
in that sleep transported hence,

I used the sweetness in my voice,
to move those Nether Gods,
seduce them if you like,
yeah, beg them
to restore my Eurydice
to health, to me and to our world,
deliver her
again into the flesh,
into that time and space,
the serpent stole
who bit my gentle love.

I sang to them
those Nether Gods
of birds in trees,
of trees beneath the stars,
of stars that sew the night together,
of night as balm for day's mistakes,
day harsh of light
and unforgiving,
forgiveness for us all.

So sweet my voice,
beguiling was my lyre,
the Nether Gods relented -
but said this: I was to lead
my Eurydice
across the void between our worlds
and not look back...
and I, fool that I am,
agreed. For understand
the dangers that we faced were legion:
dragons were there, landslips
and broken force fields,
the Goodrons to be crossed
where gravity can rip
a person's limbs away.

To verify that she, my gentle love,
was safe and well, I did look back
and saw that in the cataclysmic
rending of the sky, my Eurydice
was gone and gone for good.
My world sailed on;
my love, alas, was overboard.

And now these women,
Maenads all, have fallen on me.
These I met a mile or two from home. 
Smug bitches who
were first discourteous to me,
still in my hour of mourning, then,
when I retaliated, gouged out an eye,
began to tear me limb from limb
and will not stop, will not be satisfied
until the last of me is torn to shreds.