{"id":6168,"date":"2020-07-08T22:11:33","date_gmt":"2020-07-08T22:11:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/?p=6168"},"modified":"2023-07-08T10:19:40","modified_gmt":"2023-07-08T10:19:40","slug":"ultra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/posts\/ultra\/","title":{"rendered":"Ultra"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>\npre::first-letter { float: none !important; font-size: 100% !important; padding: none !important; font-family: \"Palatino Linotype\", \"Book Antiqua\", Palatino, serif; }\n<\/style>\n<pre>\r\n<em>Racy adaptation\/theft of Sophocles' lightning-lit play 'Electra.'<\/em>\r\n\r\n A VERSE TRAGEDY\r\n\r\n SCOLDING SOPHOKLES' ELECTRA\r\n\r\n TO A NEWNESS\r\n\r\n<!--\r\n<a href=\"Ultra.txt\">Text File<\/a>\r\n<a href=\"Ultra.doc\">Word Document<\/a>\r\n<a href=\"Ultra.wpd\">WordPerfect Document<\/a>\r\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.gregglory.com\/ultra\/\">Web Site<\/a>\r\n\r\n<a href=\"#SceneOne\">Scene One<\/a>\r\n<a href=\"#SceneTwo\">Scene Two<\/a>\r\n<a href=\"#SceneThree\">Scene Three<\/a>\r\n<a href=\"#SceneFour\">Scene Four<\/a>\r\n<a href=\"#SceneFive\">Scene Five<\/a>\r\n<a href=\"#SceneSix\">Scene Six<\/a>\r\n-->\r\n\r\n       <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\n\r\n       renewed by\r\n\r\n       <STRONG>GREGG<\/STRONG> <STRONG>GLORY<\/STRONG>\r\n\r\n\r\nPeople spend their lives trying to exercise control\r\n  over others, or trying to give up control of themselves.\r\n\r\nNo philosopher eats his metaphysics.\r\n\r\nAll material education consists of learning how to manipulate this or that:\r\nHands On.\r\nAll spiritual instruction can be said to consist of the injunction: Hands off!\r\n\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>       the Old Bitch\r\n <STRONG>AEGIE<\/STRONG>        the Lover Boy\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>        the Bullshitter\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>        the Whiner\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>      the Young Bastard\r\n <STRONG>TEACH<\/STRONG>        the Old Fuck\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<a href=\"#Top\">Top^<\/a>\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2>ULTRA'S FIRST STATEMENT \r\nTO THE AUDIENCE<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nI stand naked in front of you.\r\nI can't lie to you for one second.\r\nThis is my story you will see.\r\nI see it as one of redemption, Justice.\r\nBut how you will see it,\r\nmy thousand eyes transfixing this darkness,\r\nI do not know, and I cannot say.\r\nI only know that you have entered it, my story.\r\nYou will feel it in my blood as I feel it.\r\nI do not accept that any distance can exist between us.\r\nNot any distance in space.\r\nNot any distance in culture.\r\nNot any distance in time.\r\nNot any distance in language.\r\nNot in blood. Not in hope.\r\nYou are me, in this.\r\nWho you will be afterward even you do not know.\r\nI stand naked in front of you.\r\nI can't lie to you for one second.\r\nOh, my thousand eyes,\r\nmy thousand eyes....\r\n\r\n<a href=\"#Top\">Top^<\/a>\r\n<a name=\"SceneOne\"><\/a>\r\n<h2>SCENE ONE<\/h2>\r\n\r\n[ORESTES and TEACH among high rocks.]\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nVision is tested at these rocks.\r\nVisibility nil. Anxious air. A mist\r\nhazarding the white peaks, all blasted\r\nand devoid of any flourishing touch of nature.\r\nSeems to have been for all time,\r\nthis bareness, this timelessness.\r\nWas it always like this, Teach?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>TEACH<\/STRONG>\r\nLong as grown boys have attempted to repeat\r\nthe careful words their fathers tried to tell them\r\nwhile they crawled; a long time, maybe.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nDawn's obscured. Night's infiltrations linger.\r\nTell me: at daybreak, when christened\r\nby the uninterrupted glory of the sun,\r\nhow is it then, this land beneath me?\r\nDoesn't burn then like the visioned Justice?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>TEACH<\/STRONG>\r\nNope. Stays bleak like it is now.\r\nSame bleakness held in front of men's eyes.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nNo change from shade to sunlight?\r\nWhat a parable on inconstancy\r\nthese changeless rocks reveal. Hold still, heart,\r\nand let a steady purpose roll you to a rock\r\nthat may run these mazes unamazed\r\nand find the finish you imagined at the start.\r\nSay, that marketplace over there, in that ditch of rock,\r\nresembles what you told me about the Lukeum;\r\nbut is that it? Is that the Lukeum, Teach?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>TEACH<\/STRONG>\r\nUsed to be. The wolf-god Apollo charmed the spot,\r\nbut the spell's faded. Only traders and merchantmen\r\nbare their canines to each other there now.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nThat's right. And that big temple on the left,\r\nwhat's that? Got to be Hera's holy place, right?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>TEACH<\/STRONG>\r\nRight. Everybody's heard of that place.\r\nThe wife of Zeus, and she can bitch your fate\r\nif you're not careful. Jealous of her rites\r\nand due praises, she is. Like any wife.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nThen we must be near where my father landed\r\nhome from the war. Is that scythe of beach it?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>TEACH<\/STRONG>\r\nDamn, but you've licked up your learning. That's it.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nAnd down below this curve of earth I see\r\nbusy Mycenae, a trade capitol,\r\nbarterers for all things gold;\r\nwhatever human ingenuity deems transposable,\r\nthere is bought and sold.\r\nA wind's chasing up from the enfolding ocean;\r\nit steals the soft mist from the hillside.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>TEACH<\/STRONG>\r\nSalt tang in the sniffing air here,\r\nvery full, very full. Salt preservative\r\nkeeps meats eatable, and many things past disuse.\r\nThese grievances we carry, salted\r\nby our care, come to an appropriate port.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nNow it stands clear in glittery miniature,\r\nthere, in a thin wrinkle of the mountain,\r\nwhite as any bone, Pelops' palace,\r\nmy home. I was born in that fleck of light.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>TEACH<\/STRONG>\r\nThat's where I picked you off your dad's bloody body.\r\nHad you straight from your sister's hands, you know,\r\nand packed us into exile.\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nYes. That's where\r\nthe murder was done. A dirty story.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>TEACH<\/STRONG>\r\nTime's helped us circle back\r\nto your Dad's wet footsteps,\r\nfrom Trojan blood-sweats to this cliff;\r\nwar-exhausted, war-driven, war-enduring,\r\nhe limped here, thinking only of home\r\nand his sweet wife.\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nDamn her.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>TEACH<\/STRONG>\r\nAnd she's still your mother. Nothing simple\r\nin looking at her and putting the knife through.\r\nBraver than you have gone weak, a failed hand\r\nspatting away tears and not mopping up blood-stain;\r\nso swallow hard before you start.\r\nThis business requires a finish, not a botch.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nLet her maternity\r\nrot with her stinking bones in eternity.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>TEACH<\/STRONG>\r\nAll the rites must be obeyed.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nKill her!\r\n\r\n <STRONG>TEACH<\/STRONG>\r\nPrayer insures good luck and success.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nFuck her!\r\n\r\n <STRONG>TEACH<\/STRONG>\r\nFirst, go to your Dad's tomb, pray,\r\nget the gods on our side.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nI'll bury her!\r\n\r\n <STRONG>TEACH<\/STRONG>\r\nGive over with the proper libations and all that.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nDawn has come in blood-floods.\r\nEnough clear light to see my mother's face by.\r\n\r\n[<STRONG>TEACH<\/STRONG> hands <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG> a dagger.]\r\n\r\n <STRONG>TEACH<\/STRONG>\r\nHere's a mirror for that face. A gift\r\nfrom a loving son to a mother beloved.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nShe will see herself in this.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>TEACH<\/STRONG>\r\nFifteen years walking here, and this your last chance\r\nto wrestle back thy primacy of place,\r\nget the glory your Dad intended should be yours.\r\nFifteen years the length of wait imposed by law, remember,\r\nbefore contested kingships cement to certainties.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nThese hourglass laws shape our acts,\r\neach sand grain ticking us forward to what's next.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>TEACH<\/STRONG>\r\nThe process, the process, all things change but that,\r\nthe way learned things get stuck in your head\r\nand stay there, make you do what you've got to,\r\nthe process always staying the same,\r\nmen performing acts boys get spanked for,\r\nseen it forever, women growing into their mothers,\r\nsame belt cinched about fresh hips,\r\nFate binding all things close\r\n                              that'd fray and rot otherwise.\r\nNo forgetfulness in nature\r\nbaby acorn rising into an oak, and not otherwise,\r\nflimsy birch seeding-out like offspring,\r\nspacious grapes shooting out tendril after tendril\r\nand every vintage tasting the same,\r\nor near enough, same stock same result.\r\nVengeance dawns, and a human day grows up;\r\nwrap your man-sized sinews in veined revenge\r\naround the killer's throat! All the things I've seen,\r\nI've taken to nursing hatred, see the sense of getting even,\r\nnursed a solid hatred in your tenderness, boy,\r\nsince from your father's peaceful garden\r\nyou were bodily ripped. I thumbed the seed\r\nof your selfhood in new dirt, but loved it\r\nwith the old blood, the old stories\r\nraining down day and night to bloom in dreams\r\nas evilly as nightshade. Sweet the scent!\r\nBaleful moon, nacreous sun,\r\nloom over all our plans, our hopes!\r\n\r\n[<STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG> wails or shrieks.]\r\n\r\n <STRONG>TEACH<\/STRONG>\r\nWhat high wailing was that?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nA shrieking ghost.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>TEACH<\/STRONG>\r\nRestless dead. We came for them,\r\nand for the living also, settle the old scores,\r\nright things up in the gods' eyes,\r\nmake some sense out of the fate we're doled.\r\nSome unquiet shade may be about.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nLet's find out.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>TEACH<\/STRONG>\r\nNo, no. Due sacrifice first, first business\r\nfor you to go out on. Hike on over\r\nto your Dad's spot, pour the libation,\r\nquiet things down on the other side.\r\nI have to go into town and deceive the slaughterers.\r\nNobody'll be looking for you\r\nif they're convinced you're dead.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nAll right.\r\n\r\n\r\n<a href=\"#Top\">Top^<\/a>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<a name=\"SceneTwo\"><\/a>\r\n<h2>SCENE TWO<\/h2>\r\n\r\n[<STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>, at palace steps]\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nSorrow! Sorrow hard-bitten and unending;\r\ngrief's mountains do not yield to sun's kiss,\r\nall heavenly redemption in living love's cancelled,\r\ngentle rains by bitterness are gripped\r\neach tear turned to frost-nail,\r\nincreasing the unendurable mountain,\r\ndark weight added to blackness;\r\nthe grief, the grief!\r\nO father, o father,\r\nfallen between the still pillars\r\nof our miserable house; you, who raised them up\r\ncrumpled like trash at their feet,\r\nwild with weeping, war-stoniness gone out of you,\r\nscreeching for mercy, your man's voice\r\nout of register, hysterical through your\r\ngray beard, thinking to end your days\r\nin kingly peace. But, see, Aegisthus\r\nstands fast above you, ax across his shoulders\r\nbrass-sharp as sunlight,\r\ninevitable as nightfall,\r\nin his grin no tinder of mercy, only lust-sparks\r\nburning for the rose-hipped bed, the sex\r\nof your wife! Your bed, your bed\r\ndefiled! How many times? I conceived there,\r\nand my brother also, soft words in the house\r\nwhen we were growing up, how many\r\ncaresses saw I and Orestes, saw us flow\r\nbetween you and your caroling wife,\r\nfather and mother harmonious as sun and moon\r\nall the days of our childhood, bringing us up\r\nto love the gods and accept what's given.\r\nAh God! Ah me!\r\nGrief! Grief!\r\nNight after night tearing my heart out,\r\neach star a rip in my skin, forcing light\r\nwhere I can barely abide midnight.\r\nFather, you are with me; the stars hurt us,\r\nI cannot look within any longer, all there\r\nis devastation, coal-black ruin,\r\nloving memories sharpened to tortures,\r\nblank space where a million joys had resided.\r\n\r\n[Pause.]\r\nAnd down whirled the ax. I saw it fall\r\na thousand times before it fell. A million\r\ntimes every hour since that hour.\r\nBrains spattered everywhere, and a body\r\non the flat stone, the life gone elsewhere,\r\njust a body there, a human body, a ruined thing\r\ndisastered on the pavers; all life flown.\r\nAnd nobody else in this house seems to mind.\r\n\r\n[ <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG> goes very near the entrance\r\n  unseen. <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG> is arranging flowers on a table in the palace.]\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nHow wonderful. What wonderful flowers now grow here.\r\nThank you, Chrys. Don't you think they're\r\nwonderful, Aegisthius? Wonderful, wonderful.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nYou'll make me blush.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\n[Aside.]\r\nOught to blush, in shame, damn shame,\r\nliving with your father's slayers this way,\r\nbringin' 'em flowers, doing small chores, small things,\r\nkeeping things fresh over the gravesite,\r\nwhile our father rots in Hell. O neglected shade,\r\nrise up, with all the earth gowned about you!\r\nAll the air shall take up your vengeful measure\r\nand cry with your cry in a single heave:\r\nDeath to Klytemnestra and Aegisthus\r\nor else in this hard world there is no Justice.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nI grew them myself from dry discards.\r\nI gathered at tranquil dawn from rock sills\r\ndew-drops to water 'em every day.\r\nIt's not impossible to keep any place\r\nlooking new, no matter how it's used.\r\nNothing's impossible with the right attitude.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nO sisters' blood,\r\nthat flowing from such opposite hearts\r\ncan find no common good! I must find\r\nmy father's grave, and interr my spirit there\r\nfor some time of meditation and plain quiet.\r\n\r\n[Exit. Sits down near steps.]\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nDon't you think they're wonderful, Aegisthus?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>AEGIE<\/STRONG>\r\nIt's an absolute miracle, my dear.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nWonderful, wonderful.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nSee you at dinner.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nThank you, my daughter.\r\n[Takes off earrings and hands them to <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>.]\r\nAnd here, take these,\r\na little gift, a silver thank you.\r\nIt's a bull calf and a pregnant ewe,\r\nsacrificial stock, and handcrafted too.\r\nSilence. Enjoy them.\r\n\r\n[<STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG> dawdles unseen near the door.]\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nChrys is such a nice girl.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>AEGIE<\/STRONG>\r\nNot like that Ultra.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nShe's a scratcher, that one of mine.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>AEGIE<\/STRONG>\r\nShe doesn't seem fully enclosed by her own skin,\r\nitching at everything like that,\r\nfeeling everybody's hurt worse than they do themselves.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nIt's all just slights against her,\r\nthe way she sees it,\r\nwhole world against her.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>AEGIE<\/STRONG>\r\nAnd now the lovers are alone in the room.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nAnd to think, a little deed of death\r\nand all this was made over to us.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>AEGIE<\/STRONG>\r\nCome to bed.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nHere's the marriage altar so recently soaked.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>AEGIE<\/STRONG>\r\nHis blood warms us.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nMy Agamemnon's blood!\r\nWho knew how much there was, how much there could be,\r\nrunning to the bed-edge in waves of blood,\r\ngetting between the cracks in the masonry,\r\nmaking every sure footstep slipshod.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>AEGIE<\/STRONG>\r\nI remember the act. I put the ax\r\nsquarely through his brains and don't regret it.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nOh Aegie, you wicked wicked darling,\r\nto do all that for me.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>AEGIE<\/STRONG>\r\nI'd do it again and again.\r\n\r\n[They kiss.]\r\n\r\n <STRONG>AEGIE<\/STRONG>\r\nOne last round of negotiations with our neighboring states\r\nand all shall accept our rule of Mycenae as legal.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nBut what about Ultra? She throws her voice as if\r\nshe had arisen bearded from the grave,\r\ncrying out to every visiting dignitary:\r\n\"My father! my father! You trade with his killers!\r\nCan't you trade in justice just this once?\"\r\nIt makes their consciences almost\r\nas heavy as their purses.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>AEGIE<\/STRONG>\r\nWe're in the clear, the fifteen year moratorium\r\nexpires today. They've heard her claims,-- who hasn't?--\r\nbut if they were going actually do anything about them,\r\nabout her snipping out, they'd have done it by now.\r\nAnd once they are finally assured that business,\r\nall business, will proceed as usual,\r\nwith a little extra thrown in maybe here and there,\r\nthe ghost of Agamemnon, and all of his old mercantile ties,\r\nwill have been severed. Then we shall be able\r\nto settle down to a prosperous reign.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nOh Aegie, it's just that... that....\r\n\r\n <STRONG>AEGIE<\/STRONG>\r\nWhat is it, dear-heart? Come and tell.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nA vision has interrupted my night each night\r\nthese last seven nights. Nightmare or hallucination,\r\nI don't know which to call it. All I know\r\nis I feel insubstantial when I wake, as if\r\nI were the imaginary thing, and not this\r\nhorror imposing itself on me. Only in your arms\r\nam I myself again, gelled together enough to allow\r\nmy throat to speak what my dreaming eye has seen--\r\nthe dread continent my drowsy heart has undertaken\r\n        to visit.\r\nFirst time, that night of absolute silence,\r\nI could hear my heart telling lies in the silence.\r\nMy blood coverlet was soaked when I woke.\r\nThe quiet windows looked in on me, howling.\r\nNever thought I'd close my eyes again,\r\n                 clutching the amphora.\r\nAnd you so quiet next to me, a solemn air\r\nof vigorous detachment, breathing to breath,\r\nwith no thoughts or fear about you;\r\nI, shaken with apprehension,\r\ntouching the cold stone floor with my cheek\r\nas if fevered, your hand a normal warmness\r\nwhen I climbed back into the bed.\r\nThat was the night after the big storm\r\nthat took out part of the fig grove,\r\nand the dream-- well, I don't remember any of it.\r\nBut that fear, a heart-hammer, that was\r\nsomething else. Two more nights I woke up\r\nlike that, straining to orient myself on starlight,\r\nsee the constellations, make sure I was in the same\r\nuniverse I had departed at bedtime.\r\nFourth and fifth night I didn't sleep at all,\r\ntrying to make the best of my fear,\r\ngoing over all of our doings with hard thought,\r\nretraced our steps with a clear head,\r\narrived at the same conclusion as before.\r\nStill, each night, a trembling washed over my frame,\r\nlike moving through a sheet of icicles\r\nand leaving skin behind on the points.\r\nWe had to kill Agamemnon, had to,\r\nkilling my girl that way for a whore,\r\nand our love so new, so real, giving me a human hope.\r\nThe sixth night was a hellraiser,\r\nI'll never erase it from my mind, its in there,\r\nboiling away as furiously now as when\r\nit first erupted in my sight.\r\nI dreamed I stood alone in pure sunlight,\r\na cross-breeze from the sea at my feet\r\nand all the land about me drenched in light.\r\nAnd the scepter of power was there, golden, in my hand,\r\nholding forth from my fist like a second sun\r\nand I tell you I felt at peace right then,\r\nseeing everything beneath me peaceful and prosperous.\r\nI was as white as Artemis, and nothing could touch me.\r\nThen it came-- ooooo-- that feeling\r\nchiming my ribs and turning my heart molten;\r\nI felt fever-weak, and the sunlight didn't abate,\r\nwhat I wouldn't give for a cool drink,\r\nmy arms like a scarecrow's without the straw.\r\nI rolled my eyes every which way to see\r\nwhat was sneaking up on me-- but there was nothing,\r\nnothing! And all this time dread whining in my ears\r\nlike a spool of wire being zipped out at top speed.\r\nI took the scepter in both hands and whipped\r\nit around in the emptiness, slashing at air\r\nuntil I stumbled, touching the dust\r\nwith my open palms. And that's when I saw it\r\n--ooooo --that hem unmistakeable in sunlight,\r\nthe cresting pattern handstitched in gold,\r\nwave on wave circling around to swish at my face\r\nabject in the dust. I didn't want to look up,\r\nbut my eyes lifted of their own volition,\r\nand in truth I saw a resurrected Agamemnon\r\nstanding, hands on hips, above me.\r\nAnd my heart failed, and black tears blotted him out.\r\nThen last night, after wine, my eyes failed\r\nand sleep entered me. There he was against the sky,\r\nsame as before, grim as before, impossibly real.\r\nBut now my idle hands gripped, as pulsing worms\r\nwill curl and uncurl in the dirt. Idle hands\r\ndiscovered the discarded scepter, gripping it,\r\narising to my knees with an airless scream,\r\nfor no sound issued at my mouth, but all\r\nwas most secret, most silent, and most still,\r\neven as when the murder had been done\r\nthat threw Agamemnon revivified to my dreams.\r\nWith the strength of ten living Agamemnon's\r\ndid his apparition appall. My heart condensed,\r\na strychnine of fear sealing it shut\r\nagainst all feeling operation. I hunched back\r\nfrom his terrifying face, eyes all fire\r\nin the unnatural face. Silent accuser!\r\nI was thrown to my confused essences, and I\r\nspat back! The scepter hissed into his chest,\r\nhis face-- that I had kissed how many times!--\r\ncrushed itself into lines of astonished agony\r\nand as the scepter sunk to mid-chest, as I shoved\r\nits golden node through a heart I remembered\r\nhad emboldened a thousand acts of courage,\r\nthat face became transparent as an acid bath\r\nwill show clear the skull within the corpse.\r\nHe tottered at the shock. And every tottering\r\nemboldened my resolve, and I shoved, and I shoved,\r\ntill he on his knees was placed, till he\r\nflung spattering with his last gasp to earth,\r\nand sunlight strong as truth over all.\r\nI stood back from the ghastly exhibition,\r\nsmilingly alive, the thunder in my chest\r\na drum of victory, and him all asprawl.\r\nThe scepter, as you know who bears it most often,\r\nis delicately made, fine leaves and vines\r\nentwining a solid rod, as a sign of fruitfulness,\r\na mellow hope encoded for the glory of the state.\r\nIn this dream-light each leaf had glittered\r\nsharply, stood from its next nearest leaf\r\nin prim distinction, sharp as light,\r\neach goldenly alone. These leaves then,\r\nas I had noted, so sharp, so bright,\r\nturned all dull at once and lost themselves\r\nin a new profusion of that single stem.\r\nThe rod increased in girth, branches and arms\r\nof long wood shot out from a tree suddenly grown tall\r\nout of the hole in Agamemnon my determination\r\nhad created. Before two thuds of my heart\r\nhad gathered together and gone, this tree\r\ncovered all of Mycenae, and shaded dry valleys\r\nwith sweet fresh globes of some golden fruit\r\nan infant could reach and pluck for sucking.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>AEGIE<\/STRONG>\r\nThese vague makings of hallucination\r\nbear no force of fear for us. Dear, dear,\r\nwind your mind like a tightended bow\r\nbent to the final target, and now, even now,\r\nour destiny will fly to its center mark\r\n         without obstruction.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nOh Aegie, it's just that... that...\r\n\r\n <STRONG>AEGIE<\/STRONG>\r\nWhat? Do you believe in gods and ghosts\r\nand all-that-kinda-shit? Because I don't.\r\nNever have, never will. They ain't what got us here,\r\nhoney. You know that. You <EM>know<\/EM> that.\r\nWhatever we did is whatever got us wherever we are.\r\nAnd right now that wherever's\r\na not too disappointing status quo.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nI know. It's just that....\r\n\r\n <STRONG>AEGIE<\/STRONG>\r\nThe reading of your dream is simple:\r\nOut of Agamemnon's death, we shall flourish.\r\nTime's come nearly past due\r\nfor our fifteen year's attendance to this orchard\r\nto bear some fruit that we can eat.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nOh Aegie, it's just that... that...\r\n\r\n <STRONG>AEGIE<\/STRONG>\r\nWhat? That Ultra? Once we produce an heir\r\nshe'll be considered as nothing more\r\nthan the minor annoyance she always was.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nYes, but until then....\r\nThe amount of talk that pours through that girl!\r\nAnd every raving cry a call\r\nthat \"just one act of Justice be done.\"\r\n\r\n <STRONG>AEGIE<\/STRONG>\r\nOnce I have the sworn understanding from Athens\r\n     and Sparta\r\nthat our rule is legitimate, fixed in the common sight\r\n     of law,\r\nas this fifteen years expired will make it\r\nwe can have her exiled to some no-account town\r\nwhere she may wail to her heart's content.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nAnd no one's dignity's offended.\r\nWell and good. O Aegisthus!\r\nYou <EM>are<\/EM> wonderful!\r\n\r\n <STRONG>AEGIE<\/STRONG>\r\nWe must sort a life out of all this\r\nchaos we have courted, or else\r\nwhat will have been the point\r\nof any of it?\r\n\r\n[<STRONG>AEGISTHUS<\/STRONG> crosses to door.]\r\n\r\n <STRONG>AEGIE<\/STRONG>\r\nAnd make a libation, that should put off the gods.\r\n\r\n[<STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG> races past ULTRA, who is a\r\n  bundle of rags.]\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nIs it impossible to want as much as I want?\r\nDoes desire, which shapes us, mar our faces?\r\nDo two lovers rut snarling, like dogs?\r\nHave I been undone by accepting the reality\r\nof my own feelings and wishes? I thought\r\nwhat I thought, and wanted what I wanted.\r\nInfinite came those final feelings, infinite\r\nthat wish that provoked them in my heart!\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\n[Aside.]\r\nYour heart? Excrement!\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nSuch fresh air! Subtle mist, buff of pewters\r\nblunting the rockspar, obscuring, curing such harshness.\r\nI have my grand house, and I rule it.\r\nI have my young fuck in the old bed,\r\nmy father's betrothal gift, satin sheets\r\nand all, and I rule him too. No ghost,\r\nno guilts! [Laughs.] And the birds come to freshen\r\nmy doorstep with the clarity of their singing,\r\nmy only judges, as if I'd made a better place\r\nfor singing than their blue-varnished heaven!\r\nNo. No songbirds this morning. [Notices ULTRA.]\r\nI might have known. Damn you, Ultra,\r\nout here shitting on the stoop again?\r\nTalking to the birds? Chased away by your caw\r\nI've no doubt. God how you grate! \"Killed, killed, killed!\r\nDoesn't the world know how my father's brains\r\nwere spilled right here where I keen, blue turds\r\nall over the walkway? And injustice\r\nsmells worse than death....\" Blah, blah, blah.\r\nAnd you condemn me with a spitting mouth\r\nto the hissing gossips of the neighborhood;\r\nyou make complaints upon my virtue\r\nwho are the first issue of it breechment!\r\nIs not a woman born to be loved?\r\nAnd am I not a woman, mated and in her house,\r\nobeying all the proprieties of the town,\r\ncircumspect in everything, in nothing\r\noverzealous or unseemly, but chaste\r\nof face when a calm front is called for,\r\nmaking sweet oblations to the dear dead?\r\nEven now you see me walking with my wine\r\nheaded for your father's hellacious rockpile,\r\nand after all the wrongs he done me!\r\nLeaving me alone so young, a widow\r\nin all but name, chafing myself at home,\r\nnothing to do but keep things tidy\r\nuntil he got back from that stupid war.\r\nGoing across the seas for another woman,\r\nas if there weren't cause enough at home\r\nfor him to lift his sword. A paltry relique\r\nit was when he came back with it, dangling\r\nbetween his leathery old grieves.\r\nA bolt of rust and not much else, I'll tell you!\r\nHmm, well, enough of that. I'll start sounding\r\nlike you-- in another year or two, if I\r\nkeep it up. And you know I had just cause\r\nin killing your father. Who I <EM>did<\/EM> kill,\r\nI'll admit.\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nYes. Who you did kill, you'll admit.\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nOh, Justice was at my back, Justice held\r\nmy blade hand steady. O how I did prompt\r\nmy new lover's manliness to the task!\r\nNothing but righteousness could shell his heart\r\nwith hard enough a determination\r\nto perform so ugly an act in light.\r\nAnd I had cause enough, oh I had cause!\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nCause enough to kill.\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nRemember little Ipphy, your sister,\r\nthe other, the younger, setting sail to war?\r\nGods in a whirlwind came down to the deck\r\ndemanding her sacrifice in lightning,\r\nor else no Helen for Menelaus,\r\nuncle Menelaus who'd take used goods\r\nand send ten thousand to their deaths to get 'em, too.\r\nAnd your father, the great war leader,\r\nsweating before the cloud-face, not facing\r\nhis men; clean in his conscience to kill her,\r\nto kill your very sister! Ah God, God,\r\nwhat bloody hours I groaned on her birth night\r\nto get the little wriggler out of me!\r\nYour father sighed and fell asleep when she\r\nwas concieved. Made on this same wine\r\nI'm bringing to his ditch today, to spill.\r\nIf out of the raving madness of the sea\r\nyour dead sister could manage a voice,\r\nwhat would she say about him? Your Dada?\r\nNot as you cry would her aggrieved ghost cry,\r\nnor would render your father's sad accounts\r\non my overburdened back. I'm too old\r\nto live with such cruelties anymore.\r\nLet your hard words harp against the dead, and let\r\nthe living live. Put the blame where it belongs.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\n[Aside.]\r\nMy tongue is a knife, and will part your heart\r\nsoon enough.\r\n[Aloud.]\r\nI notice the cunning escape-work\r\nin the way you talk, letting onto truth\r\nby implication, and sideways, but directly\r\nsaying nothing at all. Yes you killed him,\r\nbut there was no justice in splitting\r\nthat noble man like a hamhock, no respect,\r\nand him the founder of our lineage;\r\ncan't have offshoots if the roots are plucked up.\r\nNo blossom in the dry air, damp earth\r\nsweating to conceive to no purpose,\r\nthe firm white seed removed by evil hands;\r\nI can't hang crucified in the air\r\nand have you sound me out like a treetrunk.\r\nAin't gonna happen. My new roots require blood.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nSplit him to the spine, and still not enough\r\nblood? Revenge ain't no way to justice, no how.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nLust-sweat won't help you skid to a steady stop,\r\nand that's all the reason you killed Dad anyway.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nShut your whore-mouth. Shut it now.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nAin't gonna happen. You asked me to talk,\r\nso I'll rumble my bellyfull. Ain't often\r\nI get a chance to say what's eating me\r\nand have you do anything besides curse\r\nand walk away.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nAll right then, all right.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\n[Misperceiving for another 'shut-up!']\r\nNo! No, you listen to me. You listen.\r\nIf you'll make my dead sister stand witness\r\nto your crimes as reqium, then I'll gladly\r\nprosecute. Ten thousand men, you numbered them\r\nwere locked airless between Illium and Troy,\r\nno way to stir the breakers in their direction,\r\nendless flats of water, tedium endless,\r\ngrey-green and no let up in sight, 1o,ooo terrified,\r\nwaiting for scurvy or starvation, not knowin',\r\nand not a breath of god-sent wind\r\nto puff them onward.\r\nThen the word came down from the gods:\r\na sacrifice....\r\nand that's what she was-- holy holy holy--\r\na sacrifice.\r\nSaved ten thousand men by her blood-let.\r\nA tough situation and a brave resolution, no less.\r\nWhat were they going to do, blow themselves\r\nto Troy?\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nAgamemnon had enough wind for it.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nSo you don't agree with the way I see things?\r\nOur histories miss each other, each sailing off\r\nto separate destinations, distinct Troys;\r\nonly sea's chaos the same, similar journeying,\r\nspecks of thinking light lost in the greyness.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nHistories. Well, at least I know what I've <EM>done<\/EM>,\r\nthe why of it not escaping me neither.\r\nAnd, no, I don't agree with you.\r\nNobody does. You're on your own.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nI wonder if that's because there's no sense\r\nin what I'm saying, or no profit in my being right.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nNo profit? That's a nice thing to say to your mother.\r\nI've talked to everybody, and nobody's got your view\r\nexcept you. Folks know what's what,\r\nwhich heads hold up through storms,\r\nwhich banners can float undamaged.\r\nAnd nobody bothers to remember your father anyway,\r\nhis ghost's just so much dust to us living folk,\r\na fragment of folklore even the slaves won't sing\r\nanymore; dusts and ghosts of dust, nothing.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nCan't you put a little remembered divinity\r\nin your looks, a spatter of real prayer\r\nagainst those yellow old teeth? Hissing and spitting\r\nagainst Dad like he was still here\r\ngetting under your skin more than ever.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nWhy you little bitch!\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nIf I'm a bitch, I inherited it;\r\nno bark but I learned to crank it out from you,\r\nperforming on your hind legs like that, paws jiggling,\r\nand another innocence slaughtered;\r\nyou hopping through the right hoops\r\nin proper sequence.\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nYou're insane!\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nWhat's sanity?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nYou can't go against the whole world, girl.\r\nNobody has that kind of strength.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nI don't need strength. I've got what's right\r\nright in front of me, no swivelling eyes\r\nabject to dirt, or saintly to mountaintop necessary\r\njust a straight look and a steady pace,\r\nget me where I need to go.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nBut you don't obey what's right. Off on your own\r\nclamoring and throwing dust on yourself,\r\npractically speaking tongues to that pile of rocks\r\nthat's got your dad under 'em.\r\nHysterical screechings off every which way\r\ngoing on about justice and injustice\r\nlooking every day dirtier and less like my daughter,\r\nless human, and taking no concern over it neither.\r\nIt ain't right. You don't follow the way things go.\r\nYou're a perpetual annoyance, and not just to myself.\r\nNobody likes you. There's not even anything pretty\r\nleft in your face. You're older than your own mother,\r\n Apollo knows!\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nWhat do any of these things matter?\r\nI build myself up out of my thoughts,\r\nno flesh about me, not the real me;\r\nbuilt the house, live in it, my sound tower,\r\ncan't see it from the outside while residenced within.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nYou stick your neck out too far,\r\nsomebody'll cut it off for you.\r\nI don't care what you think its made of.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nThings you say, surfaces and meaningless frictions,\r\nno more, no less. What's right is right. Go on.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nApollo knows I tried to rear you\r\nthe best way I knew how, considering everything,\r\nterrible years, you and Aegisthus my only bright spots,\r\nand the obedience of the people was a blessing.\r\nThey know how things are supposed to go,\r\nwhich way order comes down from the top\r\nand best obey it, that way's prosperity.\r\nThe best way I knew how, considering everything,\r\nI can't be responsible for that shiv of tongue, though.\r\nThat's all your own pure invention.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nApollo knows.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nYou've got to pray for what's expected, dear,\r\nfollow the rules, listen to consensus on things,\r\nsee which way the cards fall, then play your hand,\r\nhow else are you going to know what to do?\r\nWhat's permissible and what's not?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nStrange advice, coming from you,\r\nyou with all your murderous history,\r\nignoring every force that would've stopped you,\r\nholiness and horror both.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nYou do what I say. I know what's best.\r\nExperience hurts; and I've learned from the beating.\r\nCan't go on what you feel all the time,\r\nthat's just chaos.\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nAnd Justice isn't to be expected?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nApollo, No! If there was any justice, do you think\r\nyour father would have abandoned me the way he did?\r\nCruel as a tapeworm, the way that ate at me.\r\nBut you have to take what's given,\r\naccept the lot as it falls out,\r\ndeal with the contingencies, be flexible, pursue\r\nopportunites by scent, see when they pass by, not rush it.\r\nAnd don't go outside the acceptable,\r\nit's as simple as that.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nAnd that's sanity?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nYes, yes. It's what's <EM>normal<\/EM>, for god's sake.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nFollow the rules. Like a circle of dogs\r\ngoing nose to ass, nose to ass, following themselves\r\nnowhere everywhere. Follow the rules,\r\ndon't break the chain. Or else,\r\nhow am I going to know what to do...?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nYes, yes.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nFollow the rules. What's permissible and what's not...?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nExactly.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nExactly.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nWell, I have to go and make my libation now.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nI'll follow you and make sure everything's done straight.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nGod don't work save by letting what's to be, be, child.\r\nYou'll see.\r\n\r\n\r\n<a href=\"#Top\">Top^<\/a>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<a name=\"SceneThree\"><\/a>\r\n<h2>SCENE THREE<\/h2>\r\n\r\n[<STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>, making her sacrifice at\r\n  the grave. ULTRA has followed her. Continuous with previous scene.]\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nDrowned by all this circumstance:\r\nungrateful children in a grinding land,\r\nno longer may my body dance\r\nthat was wild under Agamemnon's hand.\r\nI've had my full load of suffering\r\nand no more may I take,\r\nI gave all I got of love and then\r\nthat fountain found its brake.\r\n\r\nDearly do I love thee, Apollo\r\nwho handles the sun like a song;\r\nblood and wine in the libation ditch, oh\r\nI have prayed for long and long.\r\nSpare me if you can, Apollo,\r\nhard words that knive from this bitch---\r\nOne killing doesn't make me a killer.\r\nI live with a gentle fellow;\r\nthough old, I'm no murderous witch.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nNow I could get her with one of these rocks,\r\nkill her, throw her down with Dad.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nHard words can knot the virtuous\r\nwhether they've some truth, or none,\r\ncome lick this libation, virtuous,\r\nobeying your laws every one.\r\nO Apollo Lykeios, decide!\r\nYour decisions must fall as a dream:\r\nif lucky, that dream shall I ride\r\nout of this narrow nexus, a stream\r\ncarrying me to wider skies.\r\n\r\n[<STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG> begins to exit.]\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\n[Aside.]\r\nBut if some stream of evil\r\nshould flow from your mouth to mine,\r\nI'll drown my enemies in evil\r\nand bob with what lightness I find.\r\nMy cash shan't float from my pocket,\r\nobscure all cheaters' eyes!\r\nThis house that I rule, now lock it,\r\nthis scepter that I stole shall be mine!\r\n\r\nO Phoebus Apollo, you hear me\r\nnow give me all that I ask;\r\nfriends that I've got, bear near me;---\r\nstay near me, my children, I ask:\r\nall bitterness in your dark breast refute,\r\nfor we are strangers in such gloom;\r\nthat spite in your eyes-- confute,--\r\nit strikes my wild heart with wild doom.\r\n\r\n[Exit.]\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nI feel like Philomela, raped by the death-dealers\r\nunable to tell a soul my troubles,\r\nhelpless to revenge myself or seek justice,\r\nfilling my spendthrift days with curses\r\nand no hope of satisfaction on the horizon.\r\nStill, pushed to the limit, stampeded\r\ninto the obscurest corners of howling night\r\nI don't need to stay silent for any reason.\r\nIf time wants to shine on murder and grief\r\nand keep on shining, let it at least\r\nsee the real thing. Can't stop the nightengale\r\nsighing interminably over her terminal young;\r\ncan't stop me from sighing, right on the front steps\r\nof the place, making strangers stop and stare\r\nat my insanity, and hearing my cause.\r\nLet all the world become an ear, and I'll\r\nshout my grievance past hearing's capacity.\r\nO deep Hell, and drab Persephone\r\nwho goes mooning about among the dead\r\nwaiting for enchanting spring to free thee,\r\nif prayers or petitions, or any cause of right\r\nhas ever followed the breeze of its intent\r\nand made itself heard to you, then let mine\r\nenter your ear but once, for I have\r\nwith hurricaning bellows blown it down below:\r\nOO Queen of Avenging, O Vengeance!\r\nHear me! You who see blood spilt,\r\nsee murder, see tyranny, see promised beds\r\nflung adulterous to another, Hear me!\r\nHear me and curse!\r\nO god-creating Furies of doom and revenge\r\nfly from the burning ground of these hot graves----\r\naid and defend the innocent with fires of wrath,\r\nflaming swords and daggers turn inward\r\non the guilty hearts of killers. Avenge, avenge!\r\nAbide not my father's death, give meaning to hope,\r\nkill all....\r\n            [Giving up.]\r\n                         and send me my brother.\r\nI can do no more on my own:\r\nThis grief is too heavy.\r\n\r\n[Enter <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>.]\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nStill wailing to the skies about Daddy's dying?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nTired of my fly-buzz chatter around your dungpile?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nWell, yes. Yes, if you want to know. Don't you\r\never get tired of being so right all the time?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nWhat's right is right. I didn't make it that way,\r\nbut I'm not going to forget that it's right, either.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nOh look, an olive tree.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nFull, dull green, heavy and ready.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nRemember what a stripling it was?\r\nPlanted that year Dad died,\r\nshivering so skinney against the wind.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nSame age as Orestes.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nNow it shadows me, and I'm a tall woman.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nYes. It's fat with dusty olives. Let each one\r\nbe pulled and pitted with hot pimentos, then spiked\r\nin Klytie's gorge, and I will call it a tree\r\nfit for picnicing under.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nThat's horrible!\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nA grave feast, and a serious eating.\r\nLook closely, the fruit almost breaks the bough.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nAnother winter, and this tree will kill itself.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nPerhaps the tree will find some comfort\r\nhacked up, the chosen wood for some death blaze,\r\nthe funeral pyre of some pious woman\r\nabout to die.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nYou sure have a cruel way of saying things.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nCan't you see, if we let Dad go unavenged to oblivion,\r\nlet things fall as they fall, no human opposition\r\ndefining and raising us against the blankness,\r\na shadow out of shadows, at least that,\r\nthat we're nothing ourselves?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nI just see how agitated you get\r\nover what seems like nothing.\r\nBeen talking like this for years, now,\r\nbewildering years.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nAnd through the straights we need to navigate\r\nwill you take it, buffet upon buffet,\r\nroughed up by the circumstances, crashed in the rapids,\r\na screaming skull moving ninety toward a waterfall,\r\nmother kicking me, and father gone to hell,\r\nyou yourself pried out of your inheritance,\r\nwashing dishes for the usurpers,\r\nsmile if you feel like, smile if you don't,\r\ndishonest in action even if honest in heart--\r\nwill you take it, so much, will you take it,\r\nso much death, and such unknowingness?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nMaybe its better not knowing anything.\r\nAccept things as they are, shove on.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nA lesson. Dogs and death. No lonely howl\r\nof mourning; they bark and aggrivate the earth\r\nwith their short claws awhile, and go on.\r\nThe briefness of their grieving teaches me\r\nto cry longer.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nA wolf will mate a wolf for life.\r\nDoes that teach people to get divorced?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nIf it does, at least it doesn't demand\r\nthat the parting laws get carved with axes\r\non the husband's heart.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nA dove whose mate is shot from the sky\r\nwill coo long evenings with sorrow\r\nand not drink a drop of mercy\r\nor eat a crumb of kindness\r\nuntil she dies too.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nDid the female dove construct the bow\r\nwait titivatting in blinds\r\nand twang the arrow onward with her beak?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nOf course not.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nAh, how I long to have wings that adore the air!\r\nI would tangle myself in Klytemesta's grey hair\r\nlike an evil bat, shitting and shrieking,\r\nshrieking and shitting, and lever out her eyes\r\nlike rare eggs, eating the sight out of each\r\nas they stared at my eating teeth.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nUltra! She's still our mother!\r\nSay a kind thing, temper yourself,\r\nwe hatched at her nest, not elsewhere.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nThen let her discover what a cuckoo she fed.\r\nI will live for my revenge.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nYou are dangerously insane. Can't kill mom\r\nno matter what she's done. No beast eats its dam.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nNo, only heroes can manage that.\r\nSniff out Justice, my dreams tell me,\r\nhowever faint the scent,\r\nand this my father's corpse\r\nstands a mountain of murder\r\nto scout out some Justice from its rotting peaks.\r\nIt fairly stinks to heaven.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nSo, you're gonna sniff like a dog,\r\nscout about like a vulture,\r\nwive a corpse like a maggot\r\nand meditate murder like a psychopath.\r\nUltra, my sister, stop, and think,\r\neven a dog, a bird, an insect, a psycho\r\nknows enough not to go up against the people\r\nin power. And Aegisthus rules here,\r\nKlytie is his instrument of state;\r\nthis is where we live, this is our home,\r\nand its only staying that way because they'll allow it.\r\nThey meet the executioner's payroll, not you and me.\r\nDad and Sis are dead, isn't that enough for you?\r\nDo you have to send this whole family to hell?\r\nUse your head to think, and not just your mouth\r\nto howl, keen, snip, yawp, and wail: revenge!\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nI would rather be any zoo of creatures\r\nthat could still remember Justice\r\nthan a daughter that could teach herself\r\nto forget her father.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nWe're one sister short of a condemning quorum,\r\ncan't jump the outcome, can't pole-vault\r\nto a narrow winning by just one truth, and that your own;\r\nreality's sandpit, just lying flat, will take your measure,\r\nyour heels' imprint landing in a stiff spray\r\namong a million contestants', scattershot footsteps\r\nleading off in every direction, confusion of intentions,\r\nno mark deeper than another.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nOne sister short....\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nYou ever feel that way, missing little Ipphy,\r\nher delicate heart excited about everything,\r\ntrusting Dad more than the sun, laughing on his shoulders,\r\nmore expecting the dawn to blow out\r\nthan Dad not rise everyday and love her.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nCan't change what's happened. Don't expect me\r\nto start forgetting it out of venal convenience;\r\nDad and Ipphy, well, what's between them's buried.\r\nMom's another matter-- and I ain't DONE nothing yet;\r\nconvey the facts, line up the truth,\r\nthat's my point of view,\r\nthen let judgement stalk the territory.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nIpphy knew how to talk to you, access your sweetness,\r\ntouch you; to me you're a mystery, troubled, troubled,\r\nthe past glowing harder in your eyes\r\nthan today's plainness.\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nAnd the future comes up sharp against me too\r\ndon't forget, a razor focus, drawing days near,\r\ngetting things clear out of the present fuzziness.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nUltra, there's something I've got to tell you.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nUh-huh. Say it out then; we can say anything to\r\n      each other.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nWell, you know that the fifteen years' wait\r\nbefore the grant of legitimacy to Aegie's reign\r\nis over this year; this year he gets the crown,\r\nand everybody'll smile about it too.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nFifteen years; a long time to live with murderers,\r\ninside or outside of the house.\r\nI'm just glad he's not around today; one less hassle.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nWell, you don't know this, but when Aegisthus gets back\r\nthey're going to nail you shut in a closet.\r\nNo eyehole for eyes, no slot for your supper.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nReally? What do you mean?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nMom had a vision. Scared her, I can tell you,\r\nand it doesn't bring you any good news either.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nSpit it out. But to one side, please;\r\nI don't think I want you touching me.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nAegisthus was leaving to sew up their position\r\nin Athens and Sparta, make sure that any feeling\r\nthat you'd been slighted by their power-grab was dead,\r\nthat commerce and trade talks could go on as usual,\r\njabber and cash transactions as usual,\r\nall the ships in their slips.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nGood, good. I see.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nGood? I don't think so. Cutting us out\r\nit sounds like. But anyway, mom came out\r\ntelling this dream; and her face was a mask\r\nof sheer terror! But anyway,\r\nI think she dreamed that Agamemnon's back.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nAnd that scared her.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nYou should have seen her eyes, pried gigantic\r\nat a cloud that dragged\r\nas Agamemnon's beard had dragged.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nLet her eyes roll out like dice,\r\nher age rake trenches for her false tears\r\nto boil down her face in heated rivets.\r\nLet her spinster's finger gesture hexes-- I don't care!\r\nLet her hair out-shriek an apocalypse of ravens,\r\nmy indifference remains.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nYour coldness scalds my skin. But her face--\r\nher lips, her blue ruined lips\r\nif only you could have seen them you'd have cried,\r\ntwisting and jerking in pain\r\nto give her noiseless nightmare\r\neven the substance of a syllable.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nHer lips! Let them jerk and tear and twist,\r\ngrimace and implore,\r\nshake straightness from their meeting,\r\nresign an infinity of smiles\r\nto a tragic, imploring gulp-- let them!\r\nFor now she is on the hook,\r\nAgamemnon's ghost has gaffed her.\r\nJerk and grin your little blood mouthfuls while you can\r\nO Mother, O Klytemnestra--\r\nthe wire of God's will still reels you\r\nby your skinned heels to Hell.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nBitterness, bitterness....\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nThis bitterness betters me,\r\nThis senseless hating hates not to hate;\r\nun-hate is my only enemy,\r\nonly lack of passion is a crime.\r\nIn this, my mother and I consummate,\r\nsparring flares of hideousness, she and I.\r\nOur spasms and passions, alike as excised aortas.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nTo live and to kill, is that it?\r\nStabbing and gasping, and stabbing and gasping\r\nwhat kind of life is that?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nLife is where all the real killing happens.\r\nLook at me: I ache and subside.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nBut you'll recover yourself, and kill.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nYes. Yes, I'm a huntress.\r\nAnd mom is an absolute bitch, a pure whore\r\nlifting her skirts to Dad's attacker,\r\nrubbing her white cunt in the blood.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nGod! Can you really think that?\r\nYou are a monster, a catastrophe,\r\nfed on the bled bone of an eyeless justice.\r\nHow can you see any rightness in suffering?\r\nUltra, Ultra, sister, sweet sister,\r\nshow some pity! For your own sweet sake!\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nPity is no part of divinity.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nEven a cat will bite the head off of a fish\r\nfirst, before eating the heart of the carcass.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nThis is our millionth winter of living here,\r\nunder the stone house white and alone\r\nthe stone portico sloping over the wreckage.\r\nMom's god-eyes enlarge and shark at us:\r\nwe swirl under her, white, small, vulnerable\r\nas pebbles. She is an old stone Gorgon\r\nfishing for stone fish with her petrifying glance.\r\nI am trapped. I cannot shrink again\r\nto the necessary slenderness of escape.\r\nI cannot go minnow-thin and disappear again\r\nunder her exploded nova stare. Can you?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nYou look at me too much.\r\nThat righteous stalking stare demands bibles.\r\nMy faith is small and personal.\r\nI don't have any spirit to spare.\r\nYour quest's inquisitive ripples\r\nbackwash my silk silts to ashes.\r\n\r\n[<STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG> begins to protest.]\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nMy altar is subtle, a dim thing,\r\nquiet velvet comforting a minor god. An incendiary substance,\r\nyour 'Justice', pushes me towards sulfer,\r\na raucous avalanche of religious lights and bonfires;\r\nyour cause and my cause burn clean together.\r\nWe are sisters of a single slaughter,\r\nof a single murdered deity, the twin daughters.\r\nBut I cannot flare and brighten as you do:\r\nyou are my sun, my sister, gigantic,\r\nI am a dwindled candle, dully lumed.\r\nI cannot wake in a dawn of pure injustice\r\nand increase myself to avenging horizons,\r\na sheer bloom of dooming illuminations.\r\nMy gown doesn't shout itself to starlight,\r\nmy dark heart doesn't ache for rightness.\r\nWhat is justice to me-- sister, listen!--\r\nWhat is justice to me\r\nwho cannot hear the wind's grace\r\nwhen my new earrings mingle their silvers?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nAdd your little light to mine\r\nand how much greater we shall shine!\r\n....And when Orestes gets here,\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nWell he's not back yet, is he?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nYou should just see how mom goes all pale and trembly\r\nwhen I start shouting\r\nthat Orestes'll come back and fix her wagon.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nOh what's the use of talking trash:\r\n\"Orestes'll this, and Orestes'll that\r\nyou wait till Orestes shows up\r\nand then you'll see...\"?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nBut he will come. And dread and holy will be his coming.\r\nNo holds on Justice then. What's right'll come out.\r\nYou wait and see if it don't.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nThere you go again.\r\n\r\n[Pause]\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nWhen Daddy died, I slept and dreamed on his grave,\r\ncalled him up, all the things I love\r\nthat get ripped away from me, my hands a girls',\r\nmy love unforged by grief, by harshness\r\nbut getting the anvil all the same, hit, hit, hit,\r\ngetting put through it, and no choice about it\r\nas if all that harm wouldn't change things forever.\r\nBut I kept to my dream, seeing things my way, steady,\r\ntrying to rescue heaven by the way I think about it,\r\nkeep meaning in the stars, our touches,\r\nnot letting that fade and wander\r\nfixing it in memory and attaching it in act\r\nso that\r\nmy decaying substance might accomplish one thing,\r\none thing against the eternities.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nLanguage strains,\r\ncan't carry the load experience gives it,\r\nbreaking our thoughts when it fails.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nI've tried it, stuffed the sun and moon in my mouth,\r\na saved heaven, and every star still shining,\r\nall the loved things communing together,\r\nand it doesn't work; failed, failed.\r\nTongue's no replacement for the things it speaks of.\r\nThe weight, the heaviness of this life,\r\nburden unbearable and no groan to unload it;\r\nferry ourselves to escapeless death we must,\r\ngrinding all our livliness to the one dust.\r\n\r\n[<STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG> tries to hug <strong>ULTRA<\/strong>.]\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nDamn it, why won't you let me hug you?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nNearness is difficult... there's a death between us.\r\nIf I find it too hard to touch\r\nwhatever it is that surrounds me now,\r\nfor a kindness, say it's because I touched bottom\r\nas close as drowning once.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\n<EM>If<\/EM> Orestes comes back, it'll be in poverty, and alone;\r\nhe won't come marching with an army at his back.\r\nI'm sorry, this truth isn't meant to hurt you,\r\nbut your chances of finding 'Justice,'\r\nspying out what's right, discerning the circumstances,\r\nknowing fog from danger, and doing right when you see it,\r\nwith this family the way it is,\r\nwon't be any better then than now.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nOh no. No. There you're wrong, and I know it.\r\nWhen death hatched spitting and attacked Papa,\r\nswerving Mom's warped skull like a snakehead,\r\nOrestes was nursing on a new, venomed egg;\r\nhis teeth grew points and he raped its innards,\r\nsucked down vengeance and remembrance\r\nin the same ragged gulp as his existence.\r\nThen he sucked harder on his human thumb,\r\ndumb rememberer,\r\nand chose, like a lion, or an angry crow\r\nto grow and kill.\r\nAnd now he'll come, bloody and bloodied,\r\nan embryo gone wrong,\r\nstalking ashes in the chalky womb\r\nthat once upon a time had burned and made him.\r\nOh and then-- what a chloroform halo he will cast!\r\nHis glance will strip her to the viscera,\r\nhis fingers transfix to the knuckles\r\nin her undressed chest, feeling and stabbing\r\nfor the cancerous worm of her absent heart.\r\nGod, what a death!\r\nAnd he will come. He will come.\r\nAnd dread and holy will be his coming.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nSomething's happening back at the house.\r\nLet's check it out.\r\n\r\n[Exit <STRONG>CHRIS<\/STRONG>]\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nCome to me my justice,\r\nyoung man with a straight look, straight eyes\r\nscrewed into a face unafraid to look,\r\nlook and see things they way they really are.\r\nCome to me my Justice,\r\nratchet back the skin that veils the hidden heart,\r\nshut out self-seekers from your clarity\r\narrive with a stance of pride, and leave prideful\r\nhead snapped straight up on young shoulders\r\nwalking into the mix of things\r\nand not quailing or looking back in dark doubt.\r\nCome to me my Justice\r\nmy Orestes risen and beatified\r\nmy Orestes unmolested by years or by hours\r\nthe tall sun still sharp in your glance\r\nno moan in your demeanor, no mope,\r\nbut quick truth firmly grasped,\r\nthought strong and right-minded, action following\r\nas the incredulous lion follows the lion-tamer,\r\nas water follows the waterfall-- how could it not?\r\naction well-disciplined and reasonable,\r\na strange thing on these acres these days\r\neverything flowing out from the center,\r\ntruth established in principle\r\n               and the tenets laid out plain.\r\nO Orestes, my handsome Justice!\r\ncome to me and wash out these crimes\r\nsee that the evil gets pent back up in Hell\r\nand free creatures can talk in daylight\r\ngreeny asphodel under no shadow\r\nnight and day spliced back together in peace\r\nnot as daymare and nightmare rudely chained\r\nbut as a joyous circut linking light and its lessening\r\nnever the utter black again as now,\r\nichorous eclipse at siesta,\r\nnoon run out of the sky drabbled in filth....\r\nMaybe then I could sleep some at night\r\nno more screams at moonrise.\r\nAnd come soon, come soon\r\n                                                my brother\r\nI am in such need of thee.\r\n\r\n\r\n<a href=\"#Top\">Top^<\/a>\r\n\r\n\r\n<a name=\"SceneFour\"><\/a>\r\n<h2>SCENE FOUR<\/h2>\r\n\r\n[<STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG> goes to join <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\n  near the palace. They overhear <STRONG>TEACH's<\/STRONG> story. Continuous with\r\n  previous scene.]\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nTell us your story, strange man.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\n[Aside to <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>.]\r\nListen sharp! and tell me if you can hear\r\nany truth in his words.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>TEACH<\/STRONG>\r\nDidn't shill my story to strangers,\r\nawait the kin, they told me, and I waited.\r\nNow here we are. Takes a stranger to tell\r\na strange tale. Divination not my intention\r\nbut straight truth unwatered. Come close.\r\nOrestes came into the city like a whirlwind,\r\nanxious for fame, never seen the like,\r\ndust up to his eyeballs, and a desperate glance,\r\nbut dignity withal, he had it, dignity unshorn,\r\nand him with all his troubles, and an exile to boot.\r\nCame dirty and road-weary, came afoot\r\nmany miles in a luckless condition,\r\ncame with a grim determination to win all,\r\nreverse his losses, change his luck,\r\n\"I come here for the Delphic prize, no less,\"\r\nhe says, his eyes white out of the dirt-smear,\r\nand no friend to bathe his head\r\nor get his legs in shape for the race.\r\nSo I done it. Clipped him short, washed him,\r\nput his name in the lists like any friend would do;\r\nand when the herald called the first race,\r\na baritone and a herald,\r\na low note over the fresh-raked track,\r\nand the runners came loping out, easy in their stride,\r\nI swear I could only see Orestes\r\nshining out as the sun clipped the stadium edge,\r\ngod-fate shining through him, more than his share,\r\nconquering the moment, a dawn embodied,\r\nso high above his fellows was he,\r\nand the crowd wild with admiration\r\nthat had been yawning and making chit-chat before,\r\nand the judges too, staring down,\r\nand he won the first prize, first race, like <EM>that<\/EM>,\r\nwithout panting. Never saw the like,\r\nwearing the crown of victory like an afterthought,\r\nan emanation of that prize face\r\nchosen for winning before they thought to scrape the track,\r\nbefore the judges thought to judge\r\nor the people gather to witness.\r\nHis body followed the runner's form and perfected it,\r\nfinished up before he started, no room\r\nfor error or gracelessness. I can't tell\r\nall of it. Some things are too subtle\r\nfor old eyes, some things not.\r\nBut he took all five first prizes, faultless,\r\nlike the general would've, spirit of Agamemon\r\nracing through young Orestes there.\r\nAll saw it; judges slapping each other on the back,\r\ntrading stories from before the war.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nSpirit of Agamemnon!\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nMy Orestes! Now you'll come running home for sure.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>TEACH<\/STRONG>\r\nBut the gods are not moved by mortal shows\r\nand keep a constant divinity in their wills,\r\nunmoved by our doings as by our wishes.\r\nWho would kill the unkindness of the skies\r\nthat gods in wayward tyranny rain down on men\r\nmust slay with prayers.\r\n\r\n[A <STRONG>SLAVE<\/STRONG> <STRONG>GIRL<\/STRONG> gives\r\n  <STRONG>TEACH<\/STRONG> a drink as he recites the tragic events without really\r\n  disturbing the flow of the story.]\r\n\r\nNext day was the chariot race; first on foot\r\nthen high astride, that's the rule. They dragged out\r\nthe regulation chariots. Little boys\r\nup before sunrise, giving them a spit-shine,\r\nputting all in order. And the horses were combed\r\nto a sheen, dawn burnished by the flanks\r\na-tremble with strength, shimmer greater\r\nthan on the chariot-works.\r\nOrestes got a white horse, a fine Aneian\r\nresponsive to his whip hand, calm eye and a stiff pace,\r\nraring to go. And the bronze horn went off\r\nwhile I was fiddling with something, and I\r\ndidn't like that: inauspicious. I looked up\r\nand saw nothing but a fumble of dust as high\r\nas the stands, all heads peering into the confusion,\r\nand the trumpet put to silence by the racket\r\nof the race, hooves and harnasses loud as Hades.\r\nThen a blinding wind came in, clearing out the skirmish,\r\nthrew dirt against the far side of the stadium\r\nbut I could see. Orestes leading on the inside track,\r\nnot sparing the whip, but laying it on\r\nto get the job done, and I was glad to see it.\r\nOut of chaos came came his strong arm, sinew\r\nlight and shapely, strong as stone,\r\nor like the pull of a vine toward sunlight,\r\nthat living tension; him white, face all yeowl\r\nabove that horse of blurr-blancheness.\r\nThen that man from Naxos came up on him, sudden,\r\nand a whole band of out-lyers\r\njimmying him into the pillars, shove of axle\r\nagainst the ungiving pillar, sparks in the dust-bank,\r\nexplosions of light under colorlessness,\r\nunruly light, and my heart jammed against my breastbone,\r\nbut he steadied it, Orestes steadied his horse,\r\nhung back for a turn, watched it out\r\nlike a trained hunter, too smart to lose all.\r\nNo berserker, but a human being at the reins,\r\nthinking, thinking, quiet under the thunder.\r\nThen he saw his chance,\r\n                        the pack had spaced,\r\nthe center still crowded, but on the inside\r\na space appeared, where a skilled hand\r\ncould dart in quick, regain the lead.\r\nAlot of any race is iffy, but skill makes chance\r\nfavor itself. And he worked himself in there, steady, steady,\r\nhimself between the pillar and the pack again,\r\nand the white horse shy from the first go-round\r\nkeeping more to the other horses than before,\r\nswift in a squadron of swiftnesses,\r\nand then they were on the leeward side of the track\r\nand the dust offended their nostrils\r\nand the other fella's horse shimmied into Orestes\r\nand he took the flaw hard;\r\nbrown dust was hollowed by his body's whiteness,\r\nflagrant against dark, and the blood dark,\r\nappearing from nowhere, head and legs airward at once,\r\nhorses' legs and men's legs pointing up\r\nstreamed with wetness, a simple wetness,\r\ndust not yet solemn over it, a black wet\r\nnot yet obscured to road-dullness.\r\nAnd everything was a tangle and nothing was clear.\r\nAnd my eyes stopped looking,\r\nbut the wails penetrated my senses. Awful, awful.\r\nA god in the dirt. And a team of athletes was sent,\r\nlaurelled and not a loser among them,\r\nto carry the disastered body out\r\n                                 and bring back the ashes.\r\nAnd here they are, in an urn too little\r\nto hold the shed tears.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nOrestes has been hacked out of my terrors;\r\nAegisthus, come home soon.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>TEACH<\/STRONG>\r\nI won't give him an elegy,\r\nme, who's overdue for one himself.\r\nIt was an awful thing to see. Nothing worse.\r\nAnd that's my story.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nBring me the ashes. I need to touch him,\r\nsomehow. Oh I don't know just what I feel!\r\nA mother first, and not a queen, you understand?\r\nSo many sorrows come with a birth\r\nand no end to trouble.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>TEACH<\/STRONG>\r\nIf I have given my thinking over to the grave\r\nforgive me, for I am old, and yet still see\r\nno hint of splendid consummation\r\nin my finishing. I am old, old.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nI'm still seeking some sign of sense myself\r\nin the undecipered texts the gods\r\nlet fall to us.\r\n\r\n\r\n<a href=\"#Top\">Top^<\/a>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<a name=\"SceneFive\"><\/a>\r\n<h2>SCENE FIVE<\/h2>\r\n\r\n[<STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG> and <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\n  walk toward the gravesite area. <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG> arrives at the grave,\r\n  and quietly offers his libation while <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG> and <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\n  chant. Continuous with previous scene.]\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nGod gazes on.\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nEon after eon proceeds.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nStars drop like gnats against sand.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nAnd the absolute zero of God's slashed face\r\nbecomes a traffic-pattern of wheel-ruts,\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\neach dark char a star-mark.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nMeteors hack a passage down his august cheek.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nOh, Orestes!\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\n<EM>Agamemnon<\/EM> and Orestes\r\nscale the lunar cliffs of his brow,\r\na black ant and a red ant.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nOne carries a lit candle, one a snuffer.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nGod can't see us from his snowfield of heaven.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nAll things good, all things evil\r\ncrawl along his eyelid like slugs,\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nsliming, humping, sliming,\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\non their irretrievable way.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nGod spits, and a sea occurs.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nGod smiles, and the earth sweats summer.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nGod winks, and infinite horizons snap shut.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nGod breathes, and the planets start their dance.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nGod pisses, and my heart fills with acid.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nGod cries, and a million spiders web and display the tears.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nGod kneels, and the outraged rise in complaint.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nGod barely concentrates, for a moment,\r\nand every soft calf stumbles to sacrifice itself.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nAnother moment, and all life storms the altars,\r\nevery face goes lightless.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nGod shuts his fist, and annihilation is created.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nGod laughs, and justice is crushed in a horse-race.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\n<EM>Death<\/EM>, says God, and we all fall down.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nYou do understand! Are you with me?\r\nEverything'll only come out right\r\nby your action and my action, not otherwise.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>CHRYS<\/STRONG>\r\nI'd better go finish my chores now.\r\n\r\n[Exit <STRONG>CHRIS<\/STRONG>.]\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nGod stutters, and words shake off the page.\r\nMother and sister both against me,\r\nno way out. I cling to empty space.\r\nO God, O Vengeance,\r\n                             why have you abandoned me?\r\nOrestes, dear, you're buried deeper\r\n                                                for every racing,\r\n       rising hope I had.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nNo, I'm not.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nBut, but....\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nHush.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nNow all that was drear\r\nis transformed to something dear,\r\nfear, not emnity, forgot;\r\nfictive fate forgives\r\n          the harrassing dreams I've got,\r\nforgives them, Argives, nay,\r\nredeems the lot!\r\nVengeance is Justice when Ultra has her day!\r\n\r\nOut of cold mind's dismissal\r\na saving voice arrives, a missive\r\nfrom plundered hopes to one\r\nwho thought all undone;\r\n           Oh, my blessed Orestes,\r\nis it you who've truly come?\r\nVengeance is Justice when Ultra has her day!\r\n\r\nIf joy shall not break my ear,\r\nsustaining hope did never hear\r\nthis living voice that voids all distress\r\nand leaves my happy heart a wilderness.\r\n            Ahh, yes, yes, Orestes,\r\nit <EM>is<\/EM> you, I'd say.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\n...Vengeance is Justice when Ultra has her day.\r\nStay hushed, my Ultra. Truth doesn't need a gong.\r\nAnd even a just death requires stealth.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nHow much louder shall we crow and bay\r\nover Klytemnestra's grave, than today we may say.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nBrother and sister then may kiss.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nAnd howl!\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nOh how much moreso then than now!\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nI've got a plan....\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nThat old fella who just told that whopper,\r\nthat's Teach, brought me up in exile, my only friend.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nNever saw such a beautiful old head,\r\nraising up a flat lie to serve what's noble.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nKept me informed about your sorrows too,\r\nevery diplomat coming back with a sad story,\r\nevery year something worse, travesty after travesty,\r\nand nobody giving a damn, not one hand\r\nextended down in mercy, or holding fast in solace,\r\nbecause it was against the will of the murderers\r\nin power, the killing elite.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nA cabal of blood,\r\nrunning over my rights every which way,\r\nday after day, as if I'd inherited nothing.\r\nBut I've got a plan to fix that....\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nNope. No time for that. Got to get on with it\r\nwhile the lie's still holding up,\r\ngiving us a clear chance, an unfair plus.\r\nIs she in the palace?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\n[Nods.]\r\nCrying up a storm of fake tears.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nBack over this way, isn't it?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nUm. Yes, it is.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\n[Gripping dagger.]\r\nThat's the way he taught me.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nFather, I won't be back without Mom's body\r\nto stove up next to yours in the family plot.\r\n\r\n[Exit.]\r\n\r\n<a href=\"#Top\">Top^<\/a>\r\n\r\n\r\n<a name=\"SceneSix\"><\/a>\r\n<h2>SCENE SIX<\/h2>\r\n\r\n[Before the Palace. Continuous with previous scene.]\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nShe's in there. I hear her stone step.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nOh, what should we do? What should we do?\r\nI can't tell which things are happening\r\noutside of me, which within. My head's spinning.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nDo you know how many hard asses she's got\r\nworking for her? We screw up, it's our asses\r\ngoing to Hades, Ultra. Straight sleighride\r\nto the shithouse. No reprieve from the reaper.\r\nFuckin' A, she just senses I'm here\r\nshe'll grind my ass into oblivion.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nNo backing out now,\r\nevery tremble moving us forward.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nI'm going in. She might smell trouble\r\nif she knows you're here. Stay outside, play lookout,\r\nthat's safest. She won't be expecting me,\r\nthinks I'm dead, don't want to ruin the surprise.\r\n\r\n[<STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG> enters the palace.]\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nSo, you would kill me? Is this justice?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nI am the word made flesh.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nPity your mother!\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nPrepare to die.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nI am that which made you. No less.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nGet ready to walk the hellground, bitch.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nIf you kill me, you kill motherhood.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nIf all mothers were as you are, I would slay them all.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nIs there no justice in mercy?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nLife is unjust. Only in death can there be perfection.\r\nAll endings are sacred, or possibly so.\r\nBut I think maybe you forgot I'm your son.\r\nDid you forget than I'm your son, Mommy?\r\nYou forget that?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nI didn't. I didn't. I swear I didn't forget.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nYeah. I think your dumb ass forgot who's ass\r\nyou was fucking; I do believe you are ignorant\r\nas to the issue of your loins, mother.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nNo. No. You're my son. See? I remember.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nYeah, I see. But maybe you're just saying that\r\nto try and save your miserable self.\r\nHow am I to know if you really remember\r\nor you're just trying to save your miserable ass?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nI remember. I remember. We... We....\r\n\r\n[Outside palace.]\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nAegisthus! That rising dust can't mean anything else!\r\nGot his whole gang with him too. Shit.\r\nBack to the disaster scene, and at a bad time.\r\n\r\n[Inside palace.]\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nWho shall endure to bring forth children again?\r\nI have carried my executioners to term.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nIn my birth your death was inexorably encoded.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nMy nipples weep to have fed you.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nThe terror of life has rushed me to this hideous reckoning.\r\nI betray myself if I let you live.\r\nI must destroy you, my source, in flames of justice\r\nto be able to continue to exist one more minute.\r\nIf you made me, and I am some sick continuation\r\n        of yourself,\r\nthen I cannot live with that terrible knowledge.\r\nAnd to prove that surmise untrue, I'll kill you.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nBut we are one flesh, one being. Cut me off\r\nand yourself shall suffer. Kill your mother\r\nand you have no origin on earth. Untouched,\r\nunwept for, no orison of history to make your own.\r\nO my unowned young man! Circumstance and fate\r\nare harder knots to untie than this.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nI am a worm that seeks your flesh\r\na maggot of death that your squalid life\r\nimprisions, and though I must husk your torso\r\na thousand times in nightmare from this second on,\r\neach raving detail complete and bloody enough\r\nto augur madness in a saint, I'll do it.\r\nThis knot of my life I shall not unknot;\r\nno, I'll do it. I will kill. I'll do it.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nEvery drop you take shall be your own,\r\nfor you are a weak stream of my mightiness,\r\nand shall cease as I lessen.\r\nNature's inexorable source corses through me.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nI was formed to live by forces of which you\r\nare an ill-tempered instrument, nothing more.\r\nYour pouch of womb carried a seed of fire\r\nand not some ruined homunculus of yourself.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nYour words attack me; my ears are filled with daggers.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nWith axes.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nOh, my son!\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nGet over to the bed. Lie down on it.\r\n[Pause.]\r\nNow that I'm here, on the point of it,\r\nI can't kill you. My arm rebels, my limbs flimsy.\r\nWhere's my cruelty, my determination?\r\nIs Dad's wet death evaporated by your hot face?\r\nI'd have thought such murder engraved for eons;\r\nand death was new on that blade,\r\nthe cut unforgetable.\r\nDid Aegisthus' ax sit so gingerly-lightly\r\nin Dad's awed-open skull? Ah Mom, Mom,\r\nI don't know what to do!\r\nIs revenge no portion of justice?\r\nDo handless gods look down from their white ward and groan,\r\nhaving given me hands to be their instrument?\r\nGod's a paraplegic. I am his thought brought living.\r\nCome. On the bed. Lie down and die.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nI grow a new inward eye for every word you speak.\r\nAnd they all see red.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nThis isn't what I was trained to see.\r\nHer new eyes, like poisonous orchids,\r\nfloat free in this scarring hurricane\r\nand infest my sight, teaching me how to see.\r\nTeach, did you serve me or yourself\r\nwhen you fed my childhood with all those angry words?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nI am praying now to die.\r\nMy heart murmurs a death-prayer,\r\nand my own lips echo it.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nWhat's this that lies beneath me?\r\nAn old woman curled on the bed. That is all.\r\nNo more, no less. What is Justice to this?\r\nA body barely breathing. No more, no less.\r\nThe world must come unhinged in rioting bloods\r\nif I kill her now. Lying there, meekly submitting.\r\nHer killer's conscience examples me,\r\nthe she-wolf learning the lamb how to bleat;\r\ncan't beat human nature for surprises,\r\nrevenge comes thick in my throat,\r\na gross word full of heart-melt, spring ice\r\nflowing up by pity from a store of swallowed tears.\r\nI go rudderless in these bewildering waters,\r\nall my world one chaos, flux on flux\r\nhuman heads indecipherable from beasts\r\nshadow tangling shadow\r\nand the light of justice scrambled\r\nthat had settled it. A waterspout, all wildness,\r\nknows more of its own way now than I do.\r\nA second birth I owe to you,\r\ndear lady, though you know it not.\r\nBe born again yourself by my mercy.\r\n\r\n[<STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG> exits, dropping knife on floor.]\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nIs she dead? Is the bitch ready to stick\r\nin the dirt yet? Orestes, speak!\r\n\r\n[<STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG> collapses to steps, head in hands.]\r\n\r\n[<STRONG>ENTER<\/STRONG> <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>, howling.]\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nDeath, death, death, death, death!\r\n\r\n[<STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG> runs in, picks up discarded blade, \r\nand starts slashing wildly. <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG> is still \r\non the bed; the bed cover gets ruined by ULTRA'S stabs and slashes. \r\nThen ULTRA scores a hit on <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>. Both women \r\nstand silent, ULTRA panting. It is the first real blood of the play.]\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nThere is a constancy of ecstasy in this tension.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nEcstasy in death? In the engineering of a killing?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nCan't you feel it? These ministering excitements\r\nof deep terror! The true lure of comitting\r\nsome one final thing?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nColdly I do eye you. Stranger, I'll call you,\r\nspawn of another's blood, not this.\r\n\r\n[<STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG> indicates her wound.]\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nHa, ha. Can't crawl away from this accusation:\r\neverything I learned, I learned by watching you.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nKill, kill.\r\nI regret the blood I reveled in.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nWould you spare me the same regret? A kindness\r\nis in that thought. As you have spared me\r\nthe stolen comfort of lecherous gold,\r\nmonies of the house brought by Dad home from Troy?\r\nAs you have spared me the shelter of my\r\nancestral house, gory now in heavy memory?\r\nAs you have spared me even in the spiteful mouths\r\nof hypocrite neighbors, who pliantly tongue\r\nthe coarse and filched authority\r\nyou and Aegisthus wrenched\r\nfrom murdered Dad's scepter-hand.\r\nAnd how should I for this spare remembrance\r\ngive thanks? Sparingly? I who have been made\r\nstrong and determinate, decided as well as decided against,\r\nhomeless in sight of my house,\r\n                               wandering, wandering\r\npinched feet wandering days on unforgiving rock\r\ntalking to sparring crows as to brothers.\r\nDo you love them too, as you love me?\r\nWe sheltered equally well in your care,\r\ncaw to caw in equal syllable.\r\nHere I stand no longer spare, nor sparing.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nWhen I go out of this world, what horrors\r\nwill come walking in?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nJustice, maybe. What's right is right. Can't bend\r\nthat, Mom. Can't bend it for you even.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nOh Ultra. Come and kiss me. One last one.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nI am inexorable as God or a waterfall.\r\nKissing you won't change that.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nCome, come. We must kiss. What else?\r\nWe are mother and daughter.\r\n[They kiss.] Do you forgive me?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nI pray every day that I won't.\r\n\r\n[Outside Palace. Enter <STRONG>AEGISTHUS<\/STRONG> and his lieutenant.]\r\n\r\n <STRONG>AEGIE<\/STRONG>\r\nConsider Ultra exiled. Or dead.\r\nMaybe I'll exile her corpse.\r\nLet her bones yatter on about her Dad,\r\nat least my ears won't have to listen to it.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nHearing the way some people really are,\r\nworst part about being born.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>AEGISTHUS<\/STRONG>\r\n[Sees <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>.]\r\nAnd who are you?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nSomeone I had not expected to meet.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>AEGIE<\/STRONG>\r\nI am Aegisthus, carrying urgent news from Athens\r\nfor Queen Klytemnestra. Stand aside.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nSo this is what Aegisthus looks like,\r\ncan't stand aside for that, not me,\r\nlike a man fixing dinner for the one who'll rob him.\r\nYour news will wait a long time before it's heard.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>AEGISTHUS<\/STRONG>\r\nKlytemnestra's queen by universal declaration now,\r\nwords catching up to the irreversible facts,\r\nand I'm no longer a royal consort\r\ncarrying out dicta from behind royal skirts\r\nbut a king beside her, engraved in name.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nAnd Ultra your inked successor.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>AEGISTHUS<\/STRONG>\r\nNo, she's a thing erased from the lists.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nErasing people born into the rulership game\r\ncan get kind of sticky.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>AEGISTHUS<\/STRONG>\r\nI shall be the seed of new kings and queens\r\nfor my Mycenae. So it is written.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nNot as easy as supposed, x-ing out the living\r\nto make way for some hypothesis.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>AEGISTHUS<\/STRONG>\r\nStand aside.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nAfraid I can't do that. The queen is busy,\r\ntaking a very important and long overdue conference\r\nwith her daughter, Ultra.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>AEGISTHUS<\/STRONG>\r\nWhat's Ultra doing in there? She hasn't seen\r\nthe inside of that place in fifteen years.\r\n[Pause.]\r\nGet out of the way. I won't ask again.\r\n\r\n[Inside the Palace.]\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nI am ashes. Ashes.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nI am ashes too.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nHow can I die? I am too miserable to die.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nWhy can't the knowledge come clear,\r\nno obstruction, justice pure and simple,\r\na slapped hand, and the right one applauded,\r\nnot this intractable mess,\r\n                        my head full of thoughts?\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nThe heart requires an archeologist\r\nits sins are so old.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nBut you and me, here,\r\nwe're clear, we're in the clear, aren't we?\r\nYou're the killer who must be killed.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nI'm the killer who must be killed.\r\n---This anguish is too strong to ever cease!\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nAll things keep rolling. Death is death.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG>\r\nHoney, I love you.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nI love you, too.\r\n\r\n[<STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG> stabs <STRONG>KLYTIE<\/STRONG> to death.]\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nNow there is a fixation of horrors in my breast.\r\nI have added to their sum. Orestes, outside, you see\r\nnothing of the wretchedness that lies within.\r\n\r\n[<STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG> comes out of palace, sees\r\n  <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG> and <STRONG>AEGISTHUS<\/STRONG>.]\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nNow I feel true sadness, who sought true Justice,\r\none act born right out of all this imperfect death.\r\nWhat we come to know\r\n                              about what we have come to do,\r\nwell, its less than a candle in the vastness;\r\nI curse such decisionless dark, and stab at it,\r\nblindness, blindness,\r\nbeating our way forward with a stick.\r\n\r\n[<STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG> grabs knife from <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>.]\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nNo no. Orestes.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nWe can't go on killing.\r\nOne death outweighs a million if its on your hands,\r\nslaughter sinking into the skin\r\n          and not the righteous excuse for doing it.\r\nPeople need to change but can't manage it,\r\n          fighting an interior tide,\r\ncompulsive thoughts blacking out the thin ray\r\n          of a decison cleanly come by.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ULTRA<\/STRONG>\r\nBut what's doing right going to mean\r\nif you can't trust yourself not to be flotsam,\r\nskittering everywhere according to this force\r\nor that, heaved back and forth by this desire\r\nand that willfulness, decisions unpredictable as guesses\r\n          and no surety in the outcome:\r\n          blood on hands laced for prayer\r\n          death coming harsh to the meek\r\n          victory seeking out wrong-doers\r\n          marriage kisses exchanged with your killer\r\n          hands clasping magnetized on what was to be avoided.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\nNothing I was taught to be have I become.\r\nBlessed or blasted, I can't tell yet.\r\n\r\n[<STRONG>AEGISTHUS<\/STRONG> removes a hidden dagger\r\n  from his clothing, dashes at <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>.]\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ORESTES<\/STRONG>\r\n[Killing <STRONG>AEGISTHUS<\/STRONG>.]\r\nWhen are you gonna learn\r\n                                              the dead don't die!\r\n[Pause.] I look you in the face as you die.\r\n\r\n[<STRONG>AEGISTHUS'<\/STRONG> guardsmen enter, en masse.]\r\n\r\n <STRONG>TEACH<\/STRONG>\r\nThe usurpers are dead. You respected murderous force before,\r\nthat put them on the throne; you must respect it now.\r\nAll hail Queen Ultra. All hail.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>ALL<\/STRONG>\r\nAll hail Queen Ultra.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>TEACH<\/STRONG>\r\nEverything that happens has God's sanction.\r\n\r\n<strong> ULTRA<\/strong>\r\nWell, I have tried, I have tired.\r\nI beg my dreaming eyes to murder the race of man.\r\n\r\n <STRONG>END<\/STRONG>.\r\n\r\n\r\nfor the little darling\r\n        lord\r\n\r\n\r\n<a href=\"#Top\">Top^<\/a>\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Racy adaptation\/theft of Sophocles&#8217; lightning-lit play &#8216;Electra.&#8217; A VERSE TRAGEDY SCOLDING SOPHOKLES&#8217; ELECTRA TO A NEWNESS ULTRA renewed by GREGG GLORY People spend their lives trying to exercise control over others, or trying to give up control of themselves. No philosopher eats his metaphysics. All material education consists of learning how to manipulate this or <a href='https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/posts\/ultra\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001002,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1740,1758],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-plays","category-ultra","category-1740-id","category-1758-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001002"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6168"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7358,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6168\/revisions\/7358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}