The Oresteia: Agamemnon, the Libation-Bearers & the Furies (20 page)

LEADER AND CHORUS:

Why? - what god hurls you on, stroke on stroke
to the long dying fall?
Why the horror clashing through your music,
terror struck to song? -
why the anguish, the wild dance?
Where do your words of god and grief begin?

 

CASSANDRA:

Ai, the wedding, wedding of Paris,
death to the loved ones. Oh Scamander,
you nursed my father . . . once at your banks
I nursed and grew, and now at the banks
of Acheron, the stream that carries sorrow,
it seems I’ll chant my prophecies too soon.

 

LEADER AND CHORUS:

What are you saying? Wait, it’s clear,
a child could see the truth, it wounds within,
like a bloody fang it tears -
I hear your destiny - breaking sobs,
cries that stab the ears.

 

CASSANDRA:

Oh the grief, the grief of the city
ripped to oblivion. Oh the victims,
the flocks my father burned at the wall,
rich herds in flames . . . no cure for the doom
that took the city after all, and I,
her last ember, I go down with her.

 

LEADER AND CHORUS:

You cannot stop, your song goes on -
some spirit drops from the heights and treads you down
and the brutal strain grows -
your death-throes come and come and
I cannot see the end!

 

CASSANDRA:

Then off with the veils that hid the fresh young bride-
we will see the truth.
Flare up once more, my oracle! Clear and sharp
as the wind that blows towards the rising sun,
I can feel a deeper swell now, gathering head
to break at last and bring the dawn of grief.
No more riddles. I will teach you.
Come, bear witness, run and hunt with me.
We trail the old barbaric works of slaughter.

 

These roofs - look up - there is a dancing troupe
that never leaves. And they have their harmony
but it is harsh, their words are harsh, they drink
beyond the limit. Flushed on the blood of men
their spirit grows and none can turn away
their revel breeding in the veins - the Furies!
They cling to the house for life. They sing,
sing of the frenzy that began it all,
strain rising on strain, showering curses
on the man who tramples on his brother’s bed.

 

There. Have I hit the mark or not? Am I a fraud,
a fortune-teller babbling lies from door to door?
Swear how well I know the ancient crimes
that live within this house.

 

LEADER:

And if I did?
Would an oath bind the wounds and heal us?
But you amaze me. Bred across the sea,
your language strange, and still you sense the truth
as if you had been here.

 

CASSANDRA:

Apollo the Prophet
introduced me to his gift.

 

LEADER:

A
god
— and moved with love?

 

CASSANDRA:

I was ashamed to tell this once,
but now . . .

 

LEADER:

We spoil ourselves with scruples,
long as things go well.

 

CASSANDRA:

He came like a wrestler,
magnificent, took me down and breathed his fire
through me and -

 

LEADER:

You bore him a child?

 

CASSANDRA:

I yielded,
then at the climax I recoiled - I deceived Apollo I

 

LEADER:

But the god’s skills - they seized you even then?

 

CASSANDRA:

Even then I told my people all the grief to come.

 

LEADER:

And Apollo’s anger never touched you? - is it possible?

 

CASSANDRA:

Once I betrayed him I could never be believed.

 

LEADER:

We believe you. Your visions seem so true.

 

CASSANDRA:

Aieeeee!—
the pain, the terror! the birth-pang of the seer
who tells the truth -
it whirls me, oh,
the storm comes again, the crashing chords !
Look, you see them nestling at the threshold?
Young, young in the darkness like a dream,
like children really, yes, and their loved ones
brought them down . . .
their hands, they fill their hands
with their own flesh, they are serving it like food,
holding out their entrails . . . now it’s clear,
I can see the armfuls of compassion, see the father
reach to taste and -
For so much suffering,
I tell you, someone plots revenge.
A lion who lacks a lion’s heart,
he sprawled at home in the royal lair
and set a trap for the lord on his return.
My lord . . . I must wear his yoke, I am his slave.
The lord of the men-of-war, he obliterated Troy—
he is so blind, so lost to that detestable hellhound
who pricks her ears and fawns and her tongue draws out
her glittering words of welcome -
No, he cannot see
the stroke that Fury’s hiding, stealth, and murder.
What outrage - the woman kills the man!
What to call
that . . . monster of Greece, and bring my quarry down?
Viper coiling back and forth?
Some sea-witch? -
Scylla crouched in her rocky nest - nightmare of sailors?
Raging mother of death, storming deathless war against
the ones she loves!
And how she howled in triumph,
boundless outrage. Just as the tide of battle
broke her way, she seems to rejoice that he
is safe at home from war, saved for her.
Believe me if you will. What will it matter
if you won’t? It comes when it comes,
and soon you’ll see it face to face
and say the seer was all too true.
You will be moved with pity.

 

LEADER:

Thyestes’ feast,
the children’s flesh - that I know,
and the fear shudders through me. It’s true,
real, no dark signs about it. I hear the rest
but it throws me off the scent.

 

CASSANDRA:

Agamemnon.
You will see him dead.

 

LEADER:

Peace, poor girl!
Put those words to sleep.

 

CASSANDRA:

No use,
the Healer has no hand in this affair.

 

LEADER:

Not if it’s true - but god forbid it is!

 

CASSANDRA:

You pray, and they close in to kill!

 

LEADER:

What man prepares this, this dreadful -

 

CASSANDRA:

Man?
You
are
lost, to every word I’ve said.

 

LEADER:

Yes -
I don’t see who can bring the evil off.

 

CASSANDRA:

And yet I know my Greek, too well.

 

LEADER:

So does the Delphic oracle,
but he’s hard to understand.

 

CASSANDRA:

His
fire
!
—
sears me, sweeps me again - the torture
Apollo Lord of the Light, you burn,
you blind me—
Agony!
She is the lioness,
she rears on her hind legs, she beds with the wolf
when her lion king goes ranging -
she will kill me -
Ai, the torture!
She is mixing her drugs,
adding a measure more of hate for me.
She gloats as she whets the sword for him.
He brought me home and we will pay in carnage.

 

Why mock yourself with these - trappings, the rod,
the god’s wreath, his yoke around my throat?
Before I die I’ll tread you -

Down, out,
die die die!
Now you’re down. I’ve paid you back.
Look for another victim - I am free at last -
make her rich in all your curse and doom.

See,
Apollo himself, his fiery hands - I feel him again,
he’s stripping off my robes, the Seer’s robes!
And after he looked down and saw me mocked,
even in these, his glories, mortified by friends
I loved, and they hated me, they were so blind
to their own demise -
I went from door to door,
I was wild with the god, I heard them call me
‘Beggar! Wretch! Starve for bread in hell!’

 

And I endured it all, and now he will
extort me as his due. A seer for the Seer.
He brings me here to die like this,
not to serve at my father’s altar. No,
the block is waiting. The cleaver steams
with my life blood, the first blood drawn
for the king’s last rites.

We will die,
but not without some honour from the gods.
There will come another to avenge us,
born to kill his mother, born
his father’s champion. A wanderer, a fugitive
driven off his native land, he will come home
to cope the stones of hate that menace all he loves.
The gods have sworn a monumental oath: as his father lies
upon the ground he draws him home with power like a prayer.

 

Then why so pitiful, why so many tears?
I have seen my city faring as she fared,
and those who took her, judged by the gods,
faring as they fare. I must be brave.
It is my turn to die.

I address you as the Gates of Death.
I pray it comes with one clear stroke,
no convulsions, the pulses ebbing out
in gentle death. I’ll close my eyes and sleep.

 

LEADER:

So much pain, poor girl, and so much truth,
you’ve told so much. But if you see it coming,
clearly - how can you go to your own death,
like a beast to the altar driven on by god,
and hold your head so high?

 

CASSANDRA:

No escape, my friends,
not now.

 

LEADER:

But the last hour should be savoured.

 

CASSANDRA:

My time has come. Little to gain from flight.

 

LEADER:

You’re brave, believe me, full of gallant heart.

 

CASSANDRA:

Only the wretched go with praise like that.

 

LEADER:

But to go nobly lends a man some grace.

 

CASSANDRA:

My noble father - you and your noble children.

 

LEADER:

What now? what terror flings you back?
Why? Unless some horror in the brain-

 

CASSANDRA:

Murder.
The house breathes with murder - bloody shambles!

 

LEADER:

No, no, only the victims at the hearth.

 

CASSANDRA:

I know that odour. I smell the open grave.

 

LEADER:

But the Syrian myrrh, it fills the halls with splendour,
can’t you sense it?

 

CASSANDRA:

Well, I must go in now,
mourning Agamemnon’s death and mine.
Enough of life!

Friends - I cried out,
not from fear like a bird fresh caught,
but that you will testify to
how
I died.
When the queen, woman for woman, dies for me,
and a man falls for the man who married grief.
That’s all I ask, my friends. A stranger’s gift
for one about to die.

 

LEADER:

Poor creature, you
and the end you see so clearly. I pity you.

 

CASSANDRA:

I’d like a few words more, a kind of dirge,
it is my own. I pray to the sun,
the last light I’ll see,
that when the avengers cut the assassins down
they will avenge me too, a slave who died,
an easy conquest.
Oh men, your destiny.
When all is well a shadow can overturn it.
When trouble comes a stroke of the wet sponge,
and the picture’s blotted out. And that,
I think that breaks the heart.

 

CHORUS:

But the lust for power never dies -
men cannot have enough.
No one will lift a hand to send it
from his door, to give it warning,
‘Power, never come again!’
Take this man: the gods in glory
gave him Priam’s city to plunder,
brought him home in splendour like a god.
But now if he must pay for the blood
his fathers shed, and die for the deaths
he brought to pass, and bring more death
to avenge his dying, show us one
who boasts himself born free
of the raging angel, once he hears-

 

AGAMEMNON:

Aagh!
Struck deep - the death-blow, deep -

 

LEADER:

Quiet. Cries,
but who? Someone’s stabbed-

 

AGAMEMNON:

Aaagh, again . . .
second blow—struck home.

 

LEADER:

The work is done,
you can feel it. The king, and the great cries -
Close ranks now, find the right way out.

 

CHORUS:

- I say send out heralds, muster the guard,
they’ll save the house.

 

- And I say rush in now,
catch them red-handed - butchery running on their blades.

 

- Right with you, do something - now or never!

 

- Look at them, beating the drum for insurrection.

 

- Yes,
we’re wasting time. They rape the name of caution,
their hands will never sleep.

 

- Not a plan in sight.
Let men of action do the planning, too.

 

- I’m helpless. Who can raise the dead with words?