Your fate teaches me this, Oedipus,
yours, you suffering man, the story
god spoke through you: praise
1370 no human life, none, for its luck.
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O Zeus, no man drew a bow like this man,
he shot his arrow home,
winning power and pleasure and wealth,
he killed the virgin Sphinx
whose talons curl, who sang
the god's black oracles.
He fought death in our land,
he towered against its threat.
I've called you my king since that time,
1380 honoring you mightily, my Oedipus,
who wield the might of Thebes.
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But now!nobody's story
has the sorrow of yours.
O my Oedipus, this is your fame:
the welcome of one harbor was enough
for you, both child and father, when your plow
drove through the room where women love.
How can the furrow your father plowed
not have screamed before now, at you, doomed man?
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1390 Time, who sees all, caught you
living a life you never willed.
Time damns this marriage which is
no marriage, where the fathered child
fathered children himself.
O son of Laius, I wish
I'd never seen you. I fill my lungs
to cry with all my power,
to speak the truth in my heart:
you gave me once new breath,
1400 Oedipus, but now you pour
darkness through my eyes.
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(Enter Servant from the palace.)
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SERVANT Masters, always the most honored men in our land,
what crushing deeds you will see and hear!
whose sorrow you must bear, if you still feel
a born Theban's love for the House of Labdacus.
I don't think rivers could wash the evil
out of this house, not the Danube or the Phasis,
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