(The doors of the house open, to show Orestes standing over the bodies of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, while attendants display the net-like garment in which Clytemnestra had entangled Agamemnon and which she herself displayed after his murder.)
— Aeschylus’s Agamemnon, trans. Richard Lattimore
You, who told me Fortune’s thunderbolts
always tapered the highest house
first: to You I sent
my fat libations but
thin, too tangled was the robe:
blood, the most fatal tag
still attached.
(If You wished for the accident, was
it still one?)
Off-stage You
wrapped Father like a pharaoh, and away
You were won by technicalities, tempting
viper’s teeth. While our seed blooms into blood corrections
just once,
sing, sing me
cleaner,
help me forget revenge, that horrible heirloom.
Let a marriage bed –
white and well-loved –
win out in the end.
Image: God’s gonna cut you down by Erin on flickr.com