CASSANDRA

  e, e, such pain, such pain!

  What’s this that comes in sight?

  It is some Hades-net;

  and she who draws it tight

  is she who shares the bed,

  who shares the guilt of blood.

  So let the gloating crew,

  bloodthirsty for this race,

  strike up the triumph-cry

  to mark this sacrifice.

  CHORUS

  What sort of Erinys is this you tell to crow

  1120 above the house? Your words don’t cheer me, no.

  The sallow drops of blood drain out

  from my pale cheeks to flood my heart,

  just as a wounded man’s life fades

  together with his sunset rays.

  CASSANDRA

  a, a, it’s plain, it’s plain!

  Keep him from the cow,

  the bull: she wraps the robes

  around him, then see how

  she springs the trap and stabs

  him with her jet-black horn.

  Down in the watery pool

  he falls. I tell of death

  by tricks enough to fill

  a deadly murder-bath.

  CHORUS

  1130 I am no expert judge of prophecy,

  but all these things you say sound bad to me.

  No human good that I can tell

  has ever come from prophets’ skill.

  Their craft and many sayings lean

  to fearful things for us to learn.

  CASSA A

  Oh, oh, so cruel a fate!

  I mean my own ordeal;

  it’s for my death I cry,

  poured in to fill the bowl.

  Why have you dragged me here to misery?

  For nothing but to share death’s agony.

  CHORUS

  1140 Mad-minded, god-possessed, frenetic,

  to set this music that’s no music

  to your own fall.

  You’re like the nightingale for pity

  with her lament of “Itys, Itys,”

  perpetual.

  CASSANDRA

  Oh, oh, the nightingale

  with her clear-ringing songs,

  the gods have fashioned her

  with feather-covered wings.

  She has a pleasant time, no cause to wail:

  for me there waits the edge of sharpened steel.

  CHORUS

  1150 These sorrows, god-possessed, onrushing,

  these elegies you mold with passion,

  where are they from?

  These darkling, piercing notes of mourning,

  waymarks of your prophetic journey,

  where are they from?

  CASSANDRA

  Oh, oh, the marriage, marriage,

  joined with death by Paris!

  Oh, oh, Scamander’s waters,

  stream of my ancestors!

  Back then I grew from girlhood

  by your flowing whirl pools:

  1160 now, though, it seems that I shall prophesy

  upon the banks where Acheron sweeps by.

  CHORUS

  Why are your words like this?

  All too precise—

  even a child could hear

  and find it clear.

  I feel the piercing bite

  of your cruel fate;

  you shake me to the core

  with notes of fear.

  CASSANDRA

  Oh, oh, the suffering, suffering

  of my city’s crushing!

  Oh, oh, the ritual slaughter

  offered by my father!

  Those sheepflocks from our meadow

  1170 proved no cure from death, though,

  no way to stop the city falling as it had to.

  And I shall spill to earth my hot blood too.

  CHORUS

  The horrors that you tell

  continue still.

  Some cruel divinity

  drums heavily,

  and turns your melody

  to threnody.

  I cannot understand

  how this will end.

  CASSANDRA

  No longer shall my prophecies peer out from veils,

  all coyly like a bride upon her wedding day;

  1180 but, springing freshly like the breezes

  from the rising dawn, they’ll stir a swell

  that breaks yet greater grief upon the shore.

  No longer shall I offer hints from riddling clues.

  Bear witness I’m a bloodhound sniffing keenly

  on the scent of horrors perpetrated long ago,

  because there is a chorus never leaves this house;

  it sings in unison but not in harmony—

  its theme is not benign. It is a drunken band,

  fired up by swigging human blood,

  1190 and yet they skulk inside, refusing to be sent away.

  What are they?

  Family Erinyes.

  They occupy the rooms, and chant their anthem

  of the primal wrong, denouncing him,

  the one who trampled on his brother’s marriage bed.

  Well? Does my arrow miss, or does it hit the mark?

  Am I a cheating prophet, just a burbling

  fortuneteller hawking door to door?

  CHORUS LEADER

  I am amazed at you: although brought up

  1200 across the seas, you have the power

  to tell what happened in an alien place

  as though you had been standing by.

  CASSANDRA

  It was Apollo raised me to this role as prophetess.

  CHORUS LEADER

  He was enraptured with desire, you mean, a god?

  CASSANDRA

  Before now I was too ashamed to speak of this:

  he twined his limbs about mine, breathing sweetness.

  CHORUS LEADER

  And did the two of you join in the act that makes a child?

  CASSANDRA

  I promised that I would, but then refused.

  CHORUS LEADER

  Were you imbued already with god-given powers?

  CASSANDRA

  1210 I was already prophesying all Troy’s sufferings.

  CHORUS LEADER

  How could Apollo’s anger let you stay unharmed?

  CASSANDRA

  Since I offended him, no one believes a word I say.

  CHORUS LEADER

  To us your prophecies appear convincing.

  CASSANDRA [cries with pain]

  Again the piercing anguish

  of foretelling true comes swirling up,

  and thrums me with discordant preludes.

  Look! See these children, like the forms in dreams,

  that sit around the house.

  1220 Their hands are full of meat, a home-cooked feast;

  it’s their own offal that they’re holding, clear—

  such pitiable portions, innards that their father gorged upon.

  And in revenge for this, I say that there is one,

  the jackal lolling in the lion’s bed, the stay-at-home,

  who’s plotting how to catch the master when he comes.

  The leader of the fleet and conqueror of Troy

  has no idea of how the hateful bitch

  can use her tongue, how she can fawn and lick

  and brightly dip her ears . . . then bite.

  (1230) So daring is the female killer of the male.

  What could I call this loathsome creature?

  Viper with envenomed fangs at either end?

  Or snapping Scylla lurking in the rocks, a threat for sailors?

  A hellish mother monster set on war with her own family?

  How brazenly she whooped her cry of triumph,

  as though it was a battle turning point,

  while seeming joyful at his safe return.

  It makes no difference if I fail convincing you,

  1240 because the future will be coming all the same.

  And soon you shall be standing there, and pitying me,

  and calling me the one whose prophecies

  infallibly turn out too true.

  CHORUS LEADER

  I recognize Thyestes and his feast of children’s meat:

  it makes me shudder when I hear it so directly put in words.

  But as for all the rest I’ve heard from you,

  I’m trying to interpret but I’ve lost the track.

  CASSANDRA

  With your own eyes, I say, you shall see Agamemnon dead.

  CHORUS LEADER

  Hush now, poor woman! Do not say such things.

  CASSANDRA

  There is no way of curing this prediction.

  CHORUS LEADER

  Not if it is to be, but may it never come about.

  CASSANDRA

  1250 You utter prayers: meanwhile, they’re readied for the kill.

  CHORUS LEADER

  Who is the man who’s planning this atrocity?

  CASSANDRA

  That shows how far you’ve lost the track of what I’ve prophesied . . .

  CHORUS LEADER

  But I can’t see how he’ll devise a way of doing this.

  CASSANDRA

  . . . although my grasp of Greek is good—too good!

  CHORUS LEADER

  The Delphic Oracle is Greek, yet hard to understand.

  CASSANDRA [cries of pain]

  The fire, how it engulfs me!

  Apollo, ai ai me!

  This is the lioness that walks upon two feet,

  who makes love with the jackal

  while the noble lion is well away.

  1260 And she is going to kill me.

  Like mixing up a potion, she has added

  her reward for me stirred in the brew;

  and as she whets her sword to kill the man,

  she gloats that he will recompense

  in blood for bringing me along with him.

  What reason have I, then, to keep

  this token stuff? A joke against myself,

  this staff and ribbons round my neck.

  [She throws her prophetic staff, ribbons, and trappings to the ground, and tramples on them.]

  To hell with you!

  I pay you back like this.

  And see, Apollo for himself

  1270 strips off this prophet rigmarole.

  He does this after gazing at me being ridiculed

  in this array by even dear ones turned against me.

  I have had to suffer insults,

  and be called a starving pauper girl,

  as though I were some begging fortuneteller;

  and now the prophet-god

  has done with me, his prophetess,

  and brought me to this kind of deathbound end.

  In place of my ancestral altar there awaits

  a butcher’s block still warm with blood

  from previous slaughter there.

  And yet . . . our deaths shall not go disregarded by the gods,

  1280 because another one shall come as our avenger,

  a mother-killing, father-vindicating child.

  A wandering fugitive, excluded from this land,

  he shall return and add the topmost row of stones

  to cap these kin-catastrophes.

  His father stretched out there shall draw him back.

  In that case, why lament so piteously?

  I have seen Troy first suffering as it did;

  and next the conquerors are being dealt

  their turn before the judgment of the gods:

  I therefore take my place as well.

  (1290) I shall be bold to die.

  [She turns toward the door to go in.]

  This door I greet now as the gate of Hades.

  And I pray I shall receive a swift, clean blow,

  so that, without convulsion,

  with my blood outgushing easily in death,

  I close these eyes.

  CHORUS LEADER

  You are a woman deep in misery,

  yet also deep in insight.

  But if you truly know about your death,

  how can you tread so resolutely,

  like a god-directed heifer to the altar-stone?

  CASSANDRA

  There’s no escaping, strangers, none.

  There’s no more time.

  CHORUS LEADER

  1300 But time is precious at the very end.

  CASSANDRA

  This is the day, today. To run away would gain me nothing.

  CHORUS LEADER

  Well, your resolve is surely rooted in a heart of courage.

  CASSANDRA

  No happy person ever has to hear such words.

  CHORUS LEADER

  It is some blessing, though, to perish gloriously.

  CASSANDRA

  O father, how I feel for you and for your noble sons!

  [She advances to the door, but recoils.]

  CHORUS LEADER

  What is the matter? Why recoil in fear?

  Why retch like that? Is this revulsion in your mind?

  CASSANDRA

  The whole house reeks of murder, dripping blood.

  CHORUS LEADER

  1310 No, no! That’s just the smell of ritual sacrifice.

  CASSANDRA

  It’s like the fetid stench exuding from a tomb.

  CHORUS LEADER

  It can’t be the exotic incense that you mean!

  CASSANDRA [again resolves to go]

  No longer shall I flutter like a frightened bird:

  Now I shall go inside and sing laments

  for Agamemnon and myself.

  Enough of life.

  Strangers, I ask you this: bear witness

  after I am dead that I was right,

  once that it’s happened: that a woman

  has met death to make amends for me, a woman,

  and a man has been laid low

  to match a badly mated man.

  1320 As a stranger on the point of death,

  I ask this favor of you.

  CHORUS LEADER

  Poor woman, I feel pity for the fate you have foretold.

  CASSANDRA

  I wish to add just one more word—

  a swan song for myself.

  I call on this, my final shining sun:

  make sure my killers pay back dear

  with their own blood for me,

  the victim slave, the easy catch.

  This is the way it is for humans:

  if they have good fortune, it is like a shadow;

  if they are unfortunate,

  it takes a dampened sponge

  to wipe the picture clean away.

  1330 And I feel far more pity for these things than those.

  [Exit CASSANDRA into the palace.]

  Choral Chant

  CHORUS

  It is only human nature

  never to know satisfaction

  with success. And no one tries to

  stop it moving into mansions

  which set envious fingers pointing;

  no one orders “No Admission.”

  This is true of this man even,

  one the gods have favored with the

  prize of taking Priam’s city,

  and of coming home in honor.

  All the same, if now he has to

  pay for murder done by former

  generations, and to die for

  his own killings; and by dying

  1340 bring about yet further killings . . .

  if all this, then who could claim that

  any human may be born to

  happy fortune, safe from troubles?

  Scene 7

  [A cry of agony is heard from inside.]

  AGAMEMNON

  Aah! I have been struck . . . deep . . . fatal. . . .

  CHORUS LEADER

  Keep quiet. Who is it shouting about deadly wounds?

  AGAMEMNON

  Again . . . I’m struck again . . . aah!

  CHORUS LEADER

  It is the king. His cries sound like the deed is done.

  We should decide together on the safest course.

  CHORUS MEMBER 1

  I tell you my advice: it is to summon citizens

  to come here to the palace bringing help.

  CHORUS MEMBER 2

  1350 I think that we should break inside at once:

  investigate it while the sword still drips with blood.

  CHORUS MEMBER 3

  I share in that opinion. My vote’s for action:

  this is not the moment for delay.

  CHORUS MEMBER 4

  It’s clear to see: this is the overture

  to setting up a new tyrannical regime.