Questions for "Medusa"

1. The poem opens with a surprising statement. Who is speaking? What is ironic about what she is saying?
2. Medusa is both a victim of metamorphosis and one of its greatest agents. What do you think is the tone of line 6 – “I too was human”? How does Medusa feel about her own metamorphosis?
3. Humans dread Medusa, yet Medusa herself dreads something. According to lines 11-14, what does she dread, and why?
4. Lines 15-27 delve deeply into Medusa's character. What does Medusa threaten to do? What is her motivation – the reason for her plans?
5. In the final stanza, what is about to happen, unknown to Medusa?
6. How does the poet's use of the first-person point of view affect your feelings about Medusa?

"Medusa", by Agha Shahid Ali

"I must be beautiful,
Or why would men be speechless
at my sight? I have populated the countryside
with animals of stone
and put nations painlessly to sleep.

I too was human. I who now live here
at the end of the world
with two aging sisters, spinsters
massaging poisons into our scalps
and sunning our ruffled snakes,

and dreading the night, when
under the warm stars
we recall men we have loved,
their gestures forever refusing us.

Then why let anything remain
when whatever we loved
turned instantly to stone?
I am waiting for the Mediterranean
to see me: It will petrify.
And as caravans from Africa begin to cross it,
I will freeze their cargo of slaves.

Soon, soon, the sky will have eyes:
I will fossilize its dome into cracked blue,
I who am about to come
into God's full view
from the wrong side of the mirror
into which He gazes.”

And so she dreams
till the sun-crimsoned shield
blinds her into nightmare:
her locks, falling from their roots,
crawl into rocks to die.
Perseus holds the sword above her neck.
Restless in her sleep, she,
for the last time, brushes back
the hissing curls from her forehead.