Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Clytemnestra



Missing out on Zeus' fatherhood,
By virtue of an accident of birth,
It is unclear if she resented her half-siblings,
Helen and Polydeuces,
It is likely though that she resented,
Helen's launching of the thousand ships,
For though she was herself
Famed for her suitors,
On one reading of her names meaning,
By another, she ever schemed, for what others had,
Her first husband, stretching out in Hades endlessly,
For the pleasures eternally denied,
Is said to have received his first intimation,
Of his fate, at her hands,
Her second, Agammenon, sacrificed her daughter,
Merely for good winds to Troy, to rescue Helen,
To spread his own empire,
In his absense, she bedded his cousin,
On his return, they murdered him.
Agammenon returned with Cassandra as concubine,
If she warned him, he, victim of Apollo's curse upon her,
Did not believe.

How the Gods wove through the lives of close relations
in those days. You could not throw a stone without,
it hitting someone half-divine, or mad.

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