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Poetry
Hecuba's Troy
By gutterkitty
05 December 2007

I wanted to call this Cassandra, but I thought that would make it even more confusing, as it's not written from her point of view.
Too confusing? Metaphor stretched too far? Let me know.


They burned the bed. My bride stumbles
from the ashes, diamond eyes
as torches in coal-feathered features.
They took those too. Through the holes
where irises once gleamed
I hear the children set alight,
screams bright. Smoke-
swallowed into ships. Their cries
echo round my sockets,
singeing the white night. Already stung
with the women’s hoarse lament;
my mother’s throat lost
in the throng of voices. Already burned,
her child a torch. Dropped from the battlements
like kindling. I coffin the little body
in my son’s shield, wedding robes
to quench the heat. Feel
the warmth of deadened fingers
through the sheets. And the air
thick with heat. Skin red like a slave’s.
My next husband will be toil,
blackened hand
already pressed into his. I will sweat
with him til my skin bursts. All is flames
Cassandra. No need to cast the world with fire.
Release the torch and quiet
your grasping prophecies. Don’t you know
they stole your eyes?

Reviews
Caught!
Written by Henry (57 comments posted) 5th December 2007
 
Poetry is not my way of life. 
 
Will have to reconsider. 
 
You have caught me with this one. 
 
Gripping, tense, dark, disturbing, Angst. 
 
Associations, on the spot, without thinking much: 
Maria Callas in Medea (was it Pasolini?),  
the Dionysos theatre at the foot of the Acropolis, 
driving through wavy but empty country to Pylos, 
across fields with buried warriors. 
 
Screams. 
 
 
 
Andromache ?
Written by Fledermaus (3470 comments posted) 5th December 2007
Had to look her name up, but you kept me wondering: If not Cassandra, then who? Clearly a woman, wife to a warrior and mother to a son. It's mainly the shield which set me on her track, and the poor son's fate which confirmed it. 
 
The Greeks are seen as the founders of Western civilization... A nice example do they make. Where do they differ from the 'barbarians'? I still got to read the Illiad. I know the stories, but not the text. 
 
Good poem and if I guessed correctly, then, it's not too confusing.
Oops
Written by Fledermaus (3470 comments posted) 5th December 2007
Silly me: The title already tells it! :eek Sorry!

Written by gutterkitty (362 comments posted) 9th December 2007
Thanks guys, glad you liked it.

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