Hero and Leander Dying

(After Rubens' "Hero and Leander')
But in a very few paintings Rubens does treat male love for a woman as a passion that cracks this armour of male authority…[In] Hero and Leander…the lesson is extremely clear: man has disobeyed the laws of male society, he has allowed passion for a woman to rule him, and the gods have punished him.
— Edwin Mullins
It is an athletic drowning,
an erotic drowning,
a theatrical drowning.
Leander postures centre-ocean,
beset by waves brimful
of foaming nymphs:
he could have had his pick,
or all of them at once.
Instead, he's dying for love —
of the agonised, Romantic kind.
Naturally, he is unaware of
Hero diving into the drink
down the side of the picture.
Did she jump, or was she
pushed by the painter?
It's so murky, there are no
strobe lights on her torso.
She falls in a tumult of
amaryllis satin as befits
a priestess of Aphrodite
whose motto is:
Live passionately;
die resplendently.
Now the tides switch them-
selves off, the lovers float
on slowing currents past
shipwrecks, curlicues of coral,
sunken islands of bull kelp—
all the sea's great stageprops.