Ranting of Cassandra

And you, cuckold sailor, going to get down to Acheron, no more walking the barn-forced steadings: father more powerful than when you were a judge of three goddesses' beauty. But that stable you should keep the sharks in the ass and read, and instead of a good feed manger and sheep flock and natural press industry people on the boat and oars in Phereclus.  Out you two thorough fares and levels of Gytheion, where brisk-fallen cliffs drop large teeth, and pine-ship anchor against the flood, you shall rest in a fleet of nine-sail playing.

(or here)

That was either a stupid or a desperate thing to do.

Perhaps it was degenerate,

perhaps degenerative.

(three)

You whose aspect has again been forced to gaze at crossed spears and the abuses of your spaces and the fire that unmakes our works: I grieve two, three times, grieve for the country, for the grave of Atlas's daughter's seaborne son who in a coracle enclosed - all alone - as he left Zerynthos at the beginning of the deluge. 

(After their towers were razed and those who survived swam desperately to avoid doom, having seen it.  Strange seas: on the fruits of the soil grazed the whales and perhaps the dolphins slept a short time in the alien beds of men.)

The dove.  The flight of fire.  Hound of Pephnos.  In rounded shell, as boat.  Vulture-lain.

Thus Spake Cassandra

Woe!  Oh, burned once before, you my home, Ilios my strong-walled mother, aflame beside the bitter boats, torched by that little dog-maned beast whose greed could not be content had he been spat out after one night's ravaging, but yet demanded a brutish wrestling -- the glut of three starless nights -- just for its conception, that once gorged the worm-dog of Zeus' brother and my sweet-songed sunlit ravager as vengeful debt-fodder: as if gods needed payment!

Who slid the serpent's greasy swallow, that writhed in its pot broiling only on flameless ash, that tore the sea-worm's stinking gore from within its belly; that killer of its own loins' fruit, that home-wrecker, the razor of my fathers' lands, indebted wretch; that would add to its tally proxy matricide, would that the deathless permitted, slicing the teat at which it had suckled.  That snatched even Zeus, father-god, from the steeps of Olympus where giant Ischenus foams the mouths of brave horses even in death; that slaughterer of sharp-eyed Scylla who feared nothing, nor even Leptynis, she-shade of Hades whom her father brought again to life by the rituals of fire and pain of brands to guard again Ausonia's narrow strait.  


Only that a dead man brought you down.   Man.  Unlike you, who the poet named puny.  And ugly.  Killed by a corpse.

Lycophron speaks to Priam

"No invocation smooths this path now, neither to god nor muse, and any summoned must be angered by the warped words confused by wailing that spit from that wormwood-stuffed pit that she names 'mouth.'  

Let me be bold then, and warn you, King: you bad me speak the exact words she use, but their sad and windy path howls loud now, not as before is her abhorred speech the whispered wash of waters lapping but, hot caustic rapid uprising from her god-raped gorge, lifts until her screaming fills the air with discord, noise that were your ceiling lesser stone it might crack and crush them and her both with its falling.  Yet I fear even that collapse could not crush this voice which yet affrights and affronts even these ears, slave's ears, which are nothing.  

I bid you then, in dread, hear the labyrinth resound to the hammer of her tongue.  Hear, then, and bring to bear thereto your strength, your wisdom, that you may discern what semblance of truth might spin through these words, which I fear repeating, as one lost behind the cave-mouth might see the smallest span of light -- to which I am blind -- before that treacherous step that meets no ground, only gulf and gape and fear and ever falling.


Tithonus your brother, other-mothered, had cut the cords and with the oarsmen, calm-weathered, loosened bonds that in worn furrows had lain furled in spiral curls, oversleeping serpents stirred by Pegasus' bright-winged dawn, drawn fast, light hurled high over Phegion.  So too those beautiful prows, surf-white many-armed machine-maidens slicing Thetis' smooth skin that is death to virgins, unfolding bright wings, driven by oar-legs with the ice-winds of Thrace tautening the bellies of sail-cloth, flames over Calydnae, stern-faced stern-carvings staring home, racing as millipedes race to the weakened fallen in battle.  Phalacran daughters thus were freed, so too on Fate's fatal peak, founded by the she-cow straying, were freed the fetters which had stitched straight the lips of Alexandra the Second Beauty and the rope breaking set the wine-raped speech on its flying.  Thus:"

inventing necessity

special circumstances