{"id":6186,"date":"2020-07-16T12:15:16","date_gmt":"2020-07-16T12:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/?p=6186"},"modified":"2023-07-08T10:19:40","modified_gmt":"2023-07-08T10:19:40","slug":"antirime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/posts\/antirime\/","title":{"rendered":"Antirime"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>\npre::first-letter { float: none !important; font-size: 100% !important; padding: none !important; font-family: \"Palatino Linotype\", \"Book Antiqua\", Palatino, serif; }<br \/>\n<\/style>\n<pre><em>A rhyming adaptation of Sophocles' 'Antigone'<\/em>\r\n\r\nAntigone stood up like a periscope,\r\ndiscerning truth, descrying hope;\r\nShe was battered, borne along\r\nby Time's monumental stream of wrong\r\nuntil into truth's white crucible\r\nshe sullenly withdrew.\r\n\r\n\r\ntheir minds on matters of philosophy.\r\nYet, for all this, Elric's thoughts were forever\r\nturning to Zarozina and the fear\r\nof what might have befallen her.\r\nThe very innocence of this girl,\r\nher vulnerability and her youth had been,\r\nto some degree at least, his salvation.\r\nHis protective love for her had helped to keep\r\nhim from brooding too deeply\r\non his own doom-filled life, and her company\r\nhad eased his melancholy.\r\n\r\n---- Michael Moorcock, Stormbringer\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<h2>SCENE ONE<\/h2>\n<pre>[ANTIGONE and ISMENE are sewing shrouds.]\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nWhose is better, darker, Ismene,\r\nof these silk parachutists' shrouds we weave\r\nto float our brothers Hellward while we grieve?\r\n\r\n<strong>ISMENE. <\/strong>\r\n By our industry and fair eyes\r\nthey shall be made to rhapsodise;\r\nYour shroud itself's a masterwork\r\nof timely love and deep-felt hurt;\r\nin its lacy and lovely weave\r\nyou help your glimmering eye to grieve.\r\nAnd its perfect, or nearly, dear,\r\nwith but one lose thread... there.\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nOh, yes. You're right. I'll need\r\nto even up the stitches with the needle.\r\n\r\n<strong>ISMENE. <\/strong>\r\n Let justice weight up her scolding scales\r\nwith equal wonder where two lives have failed;\r\nwith equal equanimity just this once in death,\r\nlet our doughty fighting brothers' breaths\r\nthe golden grace of their spent days exhaust\r\nas before in the lives which they have lost,\r\nmisplaced, they strode in double, loving arms, they two,\r\nalike extraordinary above the common view.\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nAre you done with that little needle yet?\r\n\r\n<strong>ISMENE. <\/strong>\r\n Almost done, Antigone, yet\r\nEteocles' E still needs a flirting filigree,\r\na flourish to please Charon's craggy eye.\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nMy shroud for downcast Polynices must\r\nbe nice enough for him to win love from dust\r\nand steal Persephone from Hades' heated side;\r\nless success than that in the afterworld he won't abide\r\nwho for his own hard-garnered self-regard has died.\r\nUpon the crooked little field of death he stood\r\nwith brazen eyes defying, how proud,\r\nthe tatter-rattle killing tricks\r\nof his enemies' glittering sticks;\r\nIn Hell he should have the bride of Spring\r\nas the smallest help for his pride's comforting.\r\n\r\n<strong>ISMENE. <\/strong>\r\n Eteocles too stood like a god,\r\nas though he were made to live forever, trod\r\nthe mangling hazards of our civil war to stuff\r\nand never shiver with the common guff.\r\nTwo brothers, both alike in greatness,\r\nnow a double duty for two sisters' neatness,\r\nsewing tidy shrouds to twine their griefs\r\nworn by weeping to terminal unbelief.\r\nHere's the thread. Now, watch the needle!\r\nYou'll spike yourself if you're unheedful.\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nIf this needle, potential sore,\r\nyet light enough for maids' endeavors,\r\ncould be forged a sword by hate and sorrow\r\nstrong enough to decapitate tomorrow\r\nor spark some mercy by a trick of light\r\nfrom my war-hollow heart poured stiff concrete\r\nI'd lay it in my side though God himself forbade;\r\nI'd consecrate it's bald bold blade\r\nwith my every drop of virgin blood\r\nand never sew another shroud.\r\n\r\n<strong>ISMENE. <\/strong>\r\n Don't talk like that! Your heart must yield.\r\n....We're almost at the battlefield.\r\nHere ghosts that died so full of vengeful victory\r\nin the height of useless hubris yesterday\r\nwill hear your vow and be offended\r\nthat a woman's words so warlike sounded.\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nTwo brothers, our brothers, who were to rule together\r\nbut couldn't manage it, mangled now in heather.\r\nThey have died, but the State survives the scrum\r\nand decrees one a hero, the other a hoodlum.\r\nWhat are we to do with that? What's next?\r\nCalamity,  calamity unending is the great text\r\nour sisterly sorrow-sighs must punctuate.\r\nSisters in misery, we fare not well\r\nunder this hard hail from Hell....\r\nWho's got a better right to cry for vengeance?\r\nThe dead have lost their old intemperance\r\nand lay in rotten equanimity all day---\r\nit's us, we need someplace to throw our hearts away,\r\nsome bloody spot of ground to shout alone.\r\nSoldiers and women both inter the bones;\r\nbut only women have no place to vent\r\nthe things with which their hearts are bent.\r\nOur heads are rife with greifs we can't delouse,\r\nwhile men make all the world a charnalhouse\r\nand for their killing get crowned as Kings,\r\nwith ruby wands decreeing royal things.\r\nWe women in our low office may only weep;\r\nunceasing calamity, dear sister, is ours to keep.\r\nOh, that of the royal house of Oedipus\r\nI knew nothing, and cared less!\r\nTopping it off, a rape has rasped my ears today,\r\nsharp soot from the dragon's-mouth polluting lucidity,\r\ndark words evilly twisting the clarity of air,\r\nthe few clear things we've scraped together\r\nfrom the stark wreckage of our hates and hurts.\r\n\r\n<strong>ISMENE. <\/strong>\r\n What words, Antigone, can nail me worse\r\nthan those our father Oedipus' horrors\r\nhammer in my nightly terrors,\r\nrepeat and echo in my heart's herse?\r\nKeep your words and roarings terse.\r\nCoursing, ribald, disrespecting war\r\nhas rivered me from myself so far,\r\nit is the only blood moves in me now;\r\nunceasing seas of inclement reds allow\r\nour brothers' bare bodies on the killing field\r\nno time to mend, or my heart to yeild.\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nYou have not heard, then,\r\nof Colonel Kreon's creeping dictum?\r\n\r\n<strong>ISMENE. <\/strong>\r\n The battlefield's lousy with lost bones,\r\nkinsmen skinned and left ungroaned;\r\nhere sightless eyes may scratch\r\nall night at the stars' hard latch\r\nseeking entrance to a dignified heaven\r\ntheir unburied state keeps them exiled from.\r\nThis I know. This I have seen:\r\nrummagers and mummified mourners\r\nlost among the belladonna\r\nstep toe-careful through the loot\r\nand lornly bawl, and to no boot.\r\nThis I know. This I have seen:\r\nlovely Polynices\r\nembracing a bruised Etocles\r\nin limitless suffering of the dead\r\ncome at last to their simple end.\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nHere's <strong>ETOCLES. <\/strong>How grave\r\nand graceful are the things death saves.\r\nThis solid ground has held long enough\r\nthe weight of which I long to feel the crush;\r\nSoon enough the earth in her ruin will get\r\neternal possession of all I loved, and love yet.\r\nCome, Ismene, help me lift him that I may serve\r\nthe office of the earth in brief embrace. Observe,\r\nI hold the brave beauty of his body\r\nthat proved too frail a home for his immortality.\r\n\r\n<strong>ISMENE. <\/strong>\r\n Brother, ...\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nThe soldiers too will shout like lovers,\r\nbeat their bronzen breasts, pull out their hair,\r\ntoil in tongue-tied oratory toward God's lair\r\nto gasp their grief, and blare upon the air\r\nwith trumpets in their lumped throats. They'll tear\r\nand cry for what all their pride did first inter\r\nbeneath the dirt with Etocles together.\r\n\r\n<strong>ISMENE. <\/strong>\r\n It's right they should. Oh, brother\r\nlet such honors as our customs connive\r\nhold you above the loam awhile, alive\r\nin cheating eyes still blurred by death.\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nAnd Polynices, out of breath,\r\nwhose lagging sails and body's ship\r\nthe punishing waves have stripped\r\nbreasted the selfsame oceans of this war\r\nthat Etocles and ourselves abhorred\r\nand from his topmast is drowned as deep\r\nas ever our own Etocles did sleep.\r\n\r\n<strong>ISMENE. <\/strong>\r\n Yes, Polynices, you too shall we wrap,\r\nwith balm and comely unguents trap,\r\nuntil our love-touches may render\r\nyour wounds shut up with heavy lavender\r\nthat opened such holes in us. But wait,\r\ndear Polynices, just a bit,\r\nwhile we bind and bandage Etocles,\r\nwhose priority in these housekeeping deeds\r\nlies only in that he lay over you.\r\nThus our one atom of love's made two.\r\nAlthough in life and war you two stood\r\non the bitter spectrum of faction opposed\r\nand picked out, like boxers, opposite colors,\r\nyet in death shall you rank together.\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nThey say that... God curse these crows!\r\nDread harbingers! That Kreon... No, no!\r\nYou'll bear no bit of human meat\r\nobscenely heavenward in your black beaks.\r\n\r\n[A trumpet is heard offstage.]\r\n\r\n<strong>ISMENE. <\/strong>\r\n Kreon...? Here comes his motorcade\r\nwith flag and bright insignia displayed,\r\nan annoucer reared on the back seat\r\nbearing a scroll that must yet\r\nannounce some new decree of law,\r\napplying peace to these new-finished wars.\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nLet us attend.\r\n\r\n<strong>ANNOUNCER. <\/strong>\r\nLet Etocles be buried with the great,\r\nfor Etocles has served the state.\r\nPolynices must rot, for he did not.\r\nMilitary medals will drip from Etocles' chest\r\nsince for the State alone he did his best.\r\nPolynices did not, and therefore must rot.\r\nTuesday's parade, led by this motorcade,\r\nin triumphal, sumptuous march down ol' Main Street\r\nwill shill the war-orphans a special treat.\r\nPolynices, however, our bitter enemy,\r\nstays where he lays for all to see.\r\nLet no hand touch the such-and-such\r\nwhose dark swat at our metropolis was too much.\r\nLet no hand in his burial play a caring part,\r\nthe State decrees itself quite pleased\r\nthat dogs should eat out his heart.\r\nOn pain of Death, it is decreed in Thebes!\r\nThe hollow longing of his staring skull\r\nwill serve as warning for one and all.\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nIsmene, here's suds, in this sweet water jug\r\nto lave and love Polynices when we've dug\r\nhis gravesite in this battled clay\r\nand put him to rest for the rest of the day\r\nand maybe wrote a poem to help arrow his bones\r\npast the pearly death-gates where he'll roam\r\nhalf mindless in his fulltime Hell.\r\n\r\n<strong>ISMENE. <\/strong>\r\n Antigone! Perhaps you don't hear so well.\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nPublic announcements are for public\r\nconsumption. I am a person, and shall always click\r\nmy consciousness to seperate, private stations.\r\n\r\n<strong>ISMENE. <\/strong>\r\n But that decree means our cremations!\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nIsmene, listen. We are just dust.\r\nCremation's only one more formality\r\nconfirming our transient humanity.\r\nIts your own mind you must listen to and hear.\r\nHelp me or don't help me. Whichever, dear.\r\nBut there is no middle way.\r\nNot yesterday, not tomorrow, not today.\r\nI know this world is muddy, obscure with fear.\r\nBut some things that were clear stay clear.\r\n\r\n<strong>ISMENE. <\/strong>\r\n Help? What...? I don't get it. Nothing's clear.\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nHelp me bury Polynices, of course.\r\n\r\n<strong>ISMENE. <\/strong>\r\n Bury... but... Kreon... the decree....death, and worse!\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nA person has to bury their brother,\r\nI know that deep as I know nothing other.\r\nAlthough no dictator's pen has written it,\r\nyet no monarch's censoring eraser can efface it.\r\n\r\n<strong>ISMENE. <\/strong>\r\n But the risks are hideous! We'll die\r\nand rot out here with Polynices, catching flies.\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nAre you coming with me to the farther wall?\r\n\r\n<strong>ISMENE. <\/strong>\r\n But <strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nHe's so harsh and all.\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nWhat tank could ever outflank a daisy?\r\nThe State gears forward, making lazy\r\nfigure eights on its rotored treads\r\nsearching for enemies and loaded with lead.\r\nAll his messerschmitts and schnausers\r\nhaven't the justice of a single flower\r\nwilling to die to bring to new seed\r\nthe blossom of truth its sap decrees.\r\nPolitical ideas have gone to their heads!\r\nMy future estate lies with the dead.\r\n\r\n<strong>ISMENE. <\/strong>\r\n Sister! Our troubles are already triple.\r\nOedipus in love with his infernal riddles,\r\nripping his eyes out to see terror better\r\nin the acknowledged dark where life is bitter.\r\nLife's a mess on the family plan,\r\nJocasta axing herself out of our clan\r\nas soon as she knew just what she had done,\r\ngiving incestuous birth, fucked by her son!\r\nSnatching a curtain cord, screeching \"umbilical!\"\r\nshe twisted her life out by the empty sill\r\nfull of sunset's exploded glory.\r\nAnd even that's not the end of the story.\r\nAs she lay there, remotely moored\r\nby Fate's crossed strings to the livingroom floor\r\nthere came the muffled scuffing of a hundred drums\r\nannouncing the pronouncement that our end had come.\r\nWar rolled in like an incinerator, wild\r\nto burn up the last dry leaves of our lives.\r\nAnd when Kreon marched smartly from the officers' barracks,\r\nyou laughed impolitely and said he was garish.\r\nBut Kreon's was the only steady hand\r\ncareful and regular under Etocles' command;\r\nand summer had flashed all our land to one whiteness.\r\nAnd then Etocles and Polynices\r\nstill handsome and young, fell spitted like pigs\r\nplaying their opposite numbers, sweet brothers, sweet figs,\r\ntossed on the glory of each other's swords.\r\nIt's been enough for me to foreswear the Lord.\r\nYou see my point, sister? Our life's a bust.\r\nAnd now who's left of our whole clan? Just us.\r\nWant us to go down the same way, with a flare and a fizz,\r\nunsure of everything but our own righteousness?\r\nA pair of girls! We aren't part of the army,\r\nwe left that to the men; it's far too alarming\r\nto think of fighting them now, all alone,\r\n---not all the men, all the army. Antigone!\r\nThe law's a strong word whose only\r\ncounterpoint's a punctual \"I obey.\"\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nIf that's your opinion,\r\nthen I don't want you. Shuffle on,<strong>ISMENE. <\/strong>\r\nWhen exciting multiplicity\r\nwithers to single simplicity\r\nfrom all the coulds imagination displayed\r\nwe humble humans inevitably degrade\r\ninto the choices that we've made.\r\nI'm not too good at making demands of others,\r\nthe dead are best at that, our brothers\r\nwhose twilit, silent insistence,\r\nincites a kind of conscience,\r\nknowing we live a little while in pleasure\r\nand that in cool death we die forever.\r\nGo on, go do as you please,\r\nset up a life for yourself, it's a breeze.\r\nI'm burying my brother. Seems he's got\r\none less sister than he thought.\r\n\r\n<strong>ISMENE. <\/strong>\r\nAll this battle, and now strife between us.\r\nThese offerings of the gods lick of bitterness.\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nThese offerings offer us a chance at passion,\r\na head turned to kiss what's now out-of-fashion:\r\nhuman Justice touching the immortal Right.\r\nAnd more than that, ex-sister, we can't ask to get.\r\n\r\n<strong>ISMENE. <\/strong>\r\n The gods I know how to honor in their temple,\r\nthe repeating seasons each recieve their sample\r\nof my ceremonial devotion on the burning altars.\r\nWhat I don't know is how to break the law, or alter\r\nthe one and only thing that's made exactly the same\r\nfor all of us, no matter who we think we are.\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nEvery renegade must have reasons,\r\nevery anxious stay-at-home excuses for her treasons;\r\nPardon me, Ismene, please excuse me\r\nwhile I get on with burying Polynices.\r\n\r\n<strong>ISMENE. <\/strong>\r\nAntigone, I'm afraid.\r\n\r\n[ANTIGONE gives her a look.]\r\n\r\n<strong>ISMENE. <\/strong>\r\nSo afraid. For you.\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nDon't bother. With fear I'm through.\r\nAll these furiously luminous fairy tales of yours\r\nscar the dark so serenely that they bore,\r\ndwindle to a blink, and then blink no more.\r\nYour concern is touching, but doesn't reassure;\r\nGot to think about yourself. I understand. Sure.\r\n\r\n<strong>ISMENE. <\/strong>\r\n [Looking around.]\r\nI'll keep your secret, Antigone, I won't peep;\r\nI won't tell a soul, not even in my sleep.\r\nMaybe you'll get away with it, who knows?\r\nThen everyone can be happy, like the first day of snow.\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nHappiness is like a dream which passes\r\nout on a punctual pillow, and doesn't hear its glasses\r\nshatter on tiles' evil configuration;\r\nyour concern for me, like a strange inauguration,\r\ncomes through haphazarded by static, fluffy, wrong, untrue.\r\nDon't stop youself talking. Tell 'em all. It's true!\r\nIf you race around the Spanish esplanade\r\nyou can probably catch old Kreon\r\ndiscussing troop dispositions with the gods.\r\nGo on, rabbit after them, go, go on,\r\nchatter with the evil beings posing on the lawn.\r\nJust reason to yourself about how distrustful\r\nKreon'll feel when he knows you knew it all.\r\n\r\n<strong>ISMENE. <\/strong>\r\nAren't you afraid at all? It makes me cold\r\nto think of being so breezily daring, brave and bold.\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nJust doing what's got to be done, is all.\r\n\r\n<strong>ISMENE. <\/strong>\r\nBut can you really do it, simple as a song?\r\nI bet you can't. Not really, not for long.\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nThat's a point. When my strength abates\r\nI'll give it up-- when my bones break.\r\n\r\n<strong>ISMENE. <\/strong>\r\n But why should you die for what can't succeed?\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nGet out, <strong>ISMENE. <\/strong> Before you know it,\r\nI will be the one hating you. If death bites\r\nfor honoring the dead, it will be for me\r\nan honorable death. Get out, <strong>ISMENE. <\/strong>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<h2>SCENE TWO<\/h2>\n<pre>[Battlefield previous day.  ETOCLES and POLYNICES.]\r\n\r\n<strong>SOLDIER UNDER ETOCLES.<\/strong>\r\nTwo valiant brothers in titanic conflict\r\nclear a field of foes with gigantic fists.\r\nWhat Etocles becomes, Polynices counters;\r\neach for the other's drunken army is the bouncer.\r\n\r\n<strong>2 SOLDIER. <\/strong>\r\nTheir angers are the rawest in the field.\r\n\r\n<strong>SOLDIER. <\/strong>\r\nOne to the other will never yeild.\r\n\r\n<strong>2 SOLDIER. <\/strong>\r\nThose two conquer countries within:\r\nthe soiled uttermost of brother-hatred is their sin.\r\n\r\n<strong>SOLDIER. <\/strong>\r\nEtocles becomes a fury,\r\nthousand-armed in his bloody hurry,\r\nand settles widows by the swarm\r\nwith every dainty swing of his mighty arm.\r\n\r\n<strong>2 SOLDIER. <\/strong>\r\nPolynices no less---\r\nwith each great step he kills a mess,\r\nplantations graveyards, and swamps\r\nour alfalfa fields with bloods beyond our mops.\r\n\r\n<strong>ETOCLES. <\/strong>\r\nFore, fore, to the fore!\r\nLet every backward heart cower like a whore,\r\nflailing backward and bedward which should march more!\r\nLet feet be geared to onward use alone:\r\nrearward gapes a retracting cliff.\r\nFore, fore, to the fore! No ifs!\r\nLet onward men view virtue in the face\r\nof dead enemies whose valor we debase.\r\n\r\n<strong>POLYNICES. <\/strong>\r\nOh worse than night, you bloodblack men, away,\r\nthat slow the righteous rising of my day!\r\nA fallen Etocles must my horizon be\r\nor no new dawn shall roar aloud in Thebes.\r\n\r\n<strong>1 SOLDIER. <\/strong>\r\nEtocles, ever onward! [He's slain.]\r\n\r\n<strong>POLYNICES. <\/strong>\r\nSlave! fear justice and her terrible sword;\r\nI think there are no men that fight for Etocles,\r\nbut these counterfeit counters.\r\n\r\n<strong>2 SOLDIER. <\/strong>\r\nDeath to the invader! [He's slain.]\r\n\r\n<strong>POLYNICES. <\/strong>\r\nI do believe the world's all heads\r\nand limbs stuck in its crust; my foot's in a sea of reds.\r\nI should switch my infantry for gravediggers\r\nto get a single square yard of land clearer\r\nthat I might convincingly contest.\r\n\r\n<strong>ETOCLES. <\/strong>\r\nBrother!\r\n\r\n<strong>POLYNICES. <\/strong>\r\nEtocles!\r\n\r\n[They argue and kill each other.]\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nTwo mighty hearts in turmoil contest\r\nand beat each other to silence in the sand,\r\nabsent boastful besting. [Aloud.] Victory, Thebans,\r\nmounts on lightning wings to our defended city!\r\nLet none say, however unpretty,\r\nthat the will of God was left undone;\r\nhere you see where his terror shone\r\nupon these dead brothers he once enthroned.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<h2>SCENE THREE<\/h2>\n<pre>\r\n[MERCHANT, soldiers, widows, others.]\r\n\r\n<strong>MERCHANT. <\/strong>\r\n[From list.]\r\nFunerary candles, fifteen-hundred,\r\nsilk shrouds for the cadavers, ten ton,\r\nfifty priests of Zeus with tough knees to say\r\neverlasting prayers, tend everlasting flames all day,\r\nten days of mourning drama-shows\r\ndepicting heroic deaths, and their lives below,\r\nthree-hundred twenty-five epitaphs we commission\r\nto give grave-visiting a fab frisson;\r\na wailing crier to sing out the names\r\nof our honorable dead, numerically arranged.\r\nOther minor matters, too small to mention,\r\nbut included in the contracts. Sign here, Kreon.\r\n[KREON signs.]\r\nGood, good. Now everything is bought and paid for;\r\nThe last detail of every victory's a funeral.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nDead hands pull palls\r\nto curtain our dark State\r\nwhich yesterday had bloods full\r\nenough to race in headlong gait\r\nheedless of the finish ribbon that tripped us up.\r\nNow our old dignities, due for a checkup,\r\nsteady themselves on the doctor's treadmill,\r\npausing after the last pant up the final hill\r\nthat seemed a topless, insurmountable mountain\r\ninaccessible to our steadfast intent. Yet, citizens,\r\nyour dear devotion and plauditory patience\r\nreap hard reward's overdue benificence:\r\nPeace in every suburban hedge is what you've got,\r\njust what unhesitating obedience has brought.\r\nTo Laius you bowed in lauded rows;\r\nTo Oedipus presented contented countenances;\r\nWhen he was exiled by the windmills of the gods\r\nto be blown across creation, a poor old sod,\r\nyour loyal hearts embraced his kids,\r\nrare exemplars of our Greecian Ids;\r\ndear Etocles and mighty Polynices\r\naccepted loyalty oaths of your future services.\r\nYesterday, in battle royale, Polynices slayed\r\nThebes' defender Etocles, who had strayed\r\nfrom his command post too youthfully enthused\r\nby the sight of his old school chums oozed\r\nacross the battlefield like football players\r\na vengeful god half-massacred, a bluster-\r\ning coach too tough with his exhausted team.\r\nYet success' sunlight still on Etocles' shoulder beamed,\r\nand he took for his post-game winner's trophy\r\nthe useless life of his traitor-brother, Polynices.\r\nThey met in an embrace of bloods their tomb,\r\nwho once were pried in sequence from the womb.\r\nI, as uncle to these great ones,\r\nto the inherited mantle of good government have come,\r\npolitic, conservative, yet in full power\r\nI walk the corridors of State in a direful hour,\r\nenchanting to the magnates, and brave to the plebes,\r\nI ascend this long-contested throne of Thebes.\r\n\r\n<strong>MERCHANT. <\/strong>\r\nLaw distributes the rights our leaders construe.\r\nSomeone has to know how to\r\nknow and what to know and how to do.\r\n\r\n<strong>SOLDIER. <\/strong>\r\nWithout a body, the lolling head rolls useless;\r\nLet our arms be your arms; our legs, your Zeus'\r\nthunderbolts against rebellion,\r\ndissolution, and damned disunion.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nRemember that. Your loyalty will be tested yet.\r\n\r\n<strong>MERCHANT. <\/strong>\r\nWe're behind you 100 per cent.\r\nBut we have to keep an eye to profit,\r\nnot every public service can pay the private rent.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nFine; but that's not quite what I meant.\r\nSixty sentries already walk the bloody quad\r\nand six sharpshooters practice for the firing squad;\r\nI have a plan for an enduring peace, of course,\r\nthat I simply want my citizens to endorse.\r\n\r\n<strong>MERCHANT. <\/strong>\r\n100 per cent; what more could we say?\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nIt's what's done, not said, that will win the day.\r\nHarbor no lawbreakers in your uptown house,\r\nthe State is a dog when its home to a louse.\r\n\r\n<strong>SOLDIER. <\/strong>\r\nDisobey, and incur the risk\r\nof sharpshooters six ready to whisk\r\nour souls into idiot oblivion?\r\nI'm not that brave. Or that dumb, for one.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nMost solemn comes the State's sharp pen\r\nto delete the life of a citizen.\r\nYet, coin jingles bright with money's delights\r\nand deep indifferent wisdoms have often been\r\nseduced by its tinny attractions time and again.\r\n\r\n[ENTER SENTRY.]\r\n\r\n<strong><strong>SENTRY. <\/strong>\r\n<\/strong>\r\nColonel, although I risk my neck,\r\nmy breath held steady and my mind a wreck\r\nI have a report that I must make,\r\nthough twice on my way here I did a doubletake.\r\nI turned around. Once, just at the gilded door.\r\nOnce, when I overheard your passionate disparagement pour\r\non apperceived disloyalty in basso counterpoint\r\nto your praise of death selected by the State Adroit.\r\nMy knees went backward like a bird's\r\nhesitant and repentant at such hard words\r\nto push forward through atmospheres of fear\r\nchurning in my gut's hurricane as I neared.\r\n\"Go back, you imbecile, why won't you listen\r\nto me, your mind's sinuous apprehension!\r\nDon't go whistling to your deathtrap, halt!\r\nCan't you hear Fate's gears grinding to gestalt?\"\r\nSo I paced, then heard your soldier's solid loyalty.\r\nMy heart took heart, and my stomach calm,\r\nI arrive ready to reveal, as I was ordered,\r\nwhat my senses in the State's employ recorded.\r\nAlthough, it may not make much sense, my senior.\r\nSo, then, when I got---\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nSpit it out you crippled idiot.\r\n\r\n<strong>SENTRY. <\/strong>\r\nHey! I didn't do it. Didn't see who did.\r\nThe battlefield's a forest of the disloyal dead,\r\ndesecrating the State's impersonal decorum,\r\nwith faces frozen stiff by death's intimate abhorrence.\r\nBut don't you worry, sir, we didn't choke,\r\nwe left the cold unburied in the rain to soak.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nYou should be an advocate at court,\r\nthe pertinent is absent from your report.\r\nJust what was this something-nothing that you saw?\r\nI'll need all the details. You know the law.\r\n\r\n<strong>SENTRY. <\/strong>\r\nDreadful... ghostly...\r\nUm, strange, livid, nearly unearthly...\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nSpit. It. Out.\r\n\r\n<strong>SENTRY. <\/strong>\r\nNo need to shout.\r\nBeneath, between, the mists that purled and paused\r\nupon the obscure battlefield like first-aid gauze\r\nthe corroded dead continued, rigor mortis,\r\nto shout about the pains that caused distress.\r\nBut time's silent stuffing fingers in their mouths\r\ngagged to windy whispers all their howls.\r\nOut there, near Polynice's end of the field...\r\nWell... Seems a touch of dust had begun to build.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nDust?\r\n\r\n<strong>SENTRY. <\/strong>\r\nA thin, really thin, layer almost, of, of--\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nDust?\r\n\r\n<strong>SENTRY. <\/strong>\r\nDirt, sir.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nSurely the dead are dirty.\r\n\r\n<strong>SENTRY. <\/strong>\r\nAnd what they smell of....\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nDirt....\r\n\r\n<strong>SENTRY. <\/strong>\r\nSomeone was trying to bury him, sir.\r\nAll about, the close-packed earth was stirred\r\nas if Polynice's ghost had rose up in dirge\r\nfor his unburied body. This they tried to cure,\r\nwhoever they were, spilling wine and soil\r\nover the indignant dead man Etocles had spoiled.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nA long battle. Dried blood looks like grime;\r\nsweaty work, things stick to the skin, look like crime.\r\n\r\n<strong>SENTRY. <\/strong>\r\nSomeone had put him under. Handful\r\nby handful. One foot was neatly buried, the sandal\r\npacked under neat handprints. Dirt in the wrinkles,\r\nnot fallen or scattershot, but lovingly sprinkled.\r\nA last ablution of earth.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nWHO. DARES. DO. THIS? THE TRUTH!\r\n\r\n<strong>SENTRY. <\/strong>\r\nI swear I don't know, Colonel Kreon!\r\nSir! All that fog. And we boys was tired, gone...\r\nfrom the battle still; all that fat feasting after.\r\nMy ears still rang honky-tonk tunes and laughter.\r\nWe looked for signs, but couldn't find none.\r\nJust Polynices put under, not another single one.\r\nSilence all the night. No talk amongst us,\r\ntoo weird with all those blue bodies in the dust,\r\nsome brothers to us, our places so close\r\nbut so different. It'd be strange to be verbose,\r\ntheir restless ghost tapping in at will\r\nfrom the other side; moon baleful on the fog, a veil\r\nof nothingness smothered in absence, and then,\r\nbefore long, dawn trundlin' up from Apollo's pen,\r\nstaining our apprehensions with day again.\r\nThe corporal saw it, not me, I didn't notice.\r\nA small... a extra limning of darkness on the premises.\r\nSomehow Polynices seemed just more not there,\r\nif you know what I mean. It was quite a scare.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nI do not.\r\n\r\n<strong>SENTRY. <\/strong>\r\nI wasn't me, I swear! Didn't see nothing.\r\nNothing there, not really, just a thin layer,\r\nof, of.... something.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nDust?\r\n\r\n<strong>SENTRY. <\/strong>\r\nA sort of something that the nose\r\nperceives as musk or musty, clottish, knows\r\nmostly from an unread scroll, an eviscerated crust\r\ncommon sense and experience dub as dust.\r\nBut on the wide, absract, identical terrain\r\none thing by its very absence marked the plain:\r\nscattered among expressive corpses lacking tact,\r\nno indent or dusty comma of a paw or track\r\nappeared, there was never the least sign at all\r\nof even the remotest type of animal,\r\nand this, like a magic trick, to our soldier's acumen\r\nrevealed the intruder as something human.\r\nA nest of accusations when I returned to post;\r\nthings real quiet for a sec. Boys on my shift,\r\nwell, I gotta say we started finger-pointing promptly.\r\nVisciousness on the parade grounds where we'd stomped\r\nor whispered confidences, little things, sought\r\nprivate views on public topics, where we fought,\r\nsuch like. All came to nothing, rude\r\nfear in our voices morphing to instant certitude,\r\nrapid logic making airtight cases,\r\ncalling back swear words and rushed excuses.\r\nWhole jurisprudence process was rather crude.\r\nAll came to nothing. We didn't know who'd\r\ndone what, if anything. Bad news, all of it.\r\nThen I have to see you.... sir, tell the tale, spill it.\r\nI mean, someone had to go to tell the Colonel.\r\nStared the graffiti meaningless in the barracks urinal.\r\nWe stared hard at our feet, restless, restless,\r\nand I drew the short straw... my luckiness.\r\nNo happiness in the news, none in the bearer.\r\nNobody shines to see a bad-news man draw nearer.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nAnd you all saw nothing?\r\n\r\n<strong>SENTRY. <\/strong>\r\nAbsolutely. Not a thing.\r\n\r\n<strong>SOLDIER. <\/strong>\r\nMaybe it was the gods did it. A sign.\r\n\"Ferocious prophecies first often seem benign.\"\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nGods!? Money! You were decieved and bribed!\r\nSentry-- you'll wish that you had died\r\neviscerated on a poinard, if this damned corpse\r\ngets dunked in dirt again, like they taught at church.\r\nWatch steady, night ain't too long. Keep your poise.\r\nMoney turn your heads, boys?\r\n....I'll twist 'em off!!\r\n\r\n<strong>SENTRY. <\/strong>\r\n[Aside to himself.] Dumpkoff, dumpkoff, dumpkoff.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<h2>SCENE FOUR<\/h2>\n<pre>[ETOCLES and POLYNICES before their troops.\r\nOne day earlier, morning.]\r\n\r\n<strong>LIEUTENANT. <\/strong>\r\nWhere's Polynices?\r\n\r\n<strong>SOLDIER. <\/strong>\r\nGone to view the defenses.\r\n\r\n<strong>2 SOLDIER. <\/strong>\r\nTheir men are nearly double ours.\r\nFor every four grunts they've a dozen howitzers.\r\n\r\n<strong>LIEUTENANT. <\/strong>\r\nPraise Zeus we have two arms each, then,\r\nto double up the dead and slain.\r\n\r\n<strong>SOLDIER. <\/strong>\r\nIt's bad odds, Lieutenant, and what\r\nwe've come all this way, tramping at night,\r\nthe rutty road waterlogged, horses slipping\r\nand men crying crumpled under 'em, then stilling....\r\nToo far from home or victory to change our places;\r\ntomorrow's unlucky dead today have breathing faces.\r\nWho knows who? Today a riddle's all they'll tell us.\r\n\r\n[ENTER POLYNICES.]\r\n\r\n<strong>2 SOLDIER. <\/strong>\r\nThese warlike jaws that snap around us!\r\nIf only we could plant their dragon's-teeth\r\nand grow more men!\r\n\r\n<strong>SOLDIER. <\/strong>\r\n         That'd be a relief.\r\n\r\n<strong>POLYNICES. <\/strong>\r\nThe jaws that snap!\r\nWhy, Euroborus, let them trap\r\non air, or, like the dragon of your name,\r\nengulf its own tail in hungry shame\r\n--- before it slither-slumps away!\r\nWho has the greater cause today?\r\nThe greater work to do, honor to win?\r\nOur victory will change the world again.\r\nNature bites at changes, dogs fleaed,\r\nlike sleepy dragons, snap, once stirred\r\neven if by an angel's foot. Such teeth\r\nwe do not need, nor would I have them,\r\nfor who would so late desert a cause,\r\neven were it the wrongest flag on earth,\r\nhim I account of no-account, a less than dirt, no worth,\r\na thing, and not a man. O traitorous hope!\r\nI hope Etocles doesn't pull back one\r\nounce of spitting venom. But let us win,\r\nif, by the gods, we are deemed and fated\r\nto win this great contest, against all we hated!\r\nThe harder fought, the more our fame's assured,\r\nthe greater the odds, the greater god's grace purrs,\r\nmoving though our rough ready human limbs\r\nas does our very blood! Roar on, great dragon!\r\nWe'll cheer merry swords into your gullet, snake!\r\nThus your awesome voice shall be slaked\r\nby the loud levity of our shouts, all of one\r\ncoiled killing intent when your death comes!\r\n[The lads all cheer.]\r\n\r\nETOCLES' CAMP.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nWhat's that?\r\n\r\n<strong>HAEMON. <\/strong>\r\nIt seems a boisterous roaring\r\nfrom Polynices' camp is coming.\r\n\r\n<strong>2 SOLDIER. <\/strong>\r\nMy heart is struck with fear,\r\npouring ice for my veins in by my ears.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nCourage, swayback.\r\nHere comes Etocles to enhearten us, fool.\r\nLet your cold ears hear his incendiary flak.\r\nLet him pour his dragon's soul into you.\r\n\r\n[ENTER ETOCLES.]\r\n\r\n<strong>ETOCLES. <\/strong>\r\nNo speech given out by the top dog, sir Sir,\r\never made a lesser cur bark louder.\r\nNo talk, however eloquent, however electrifying,\r\never shocked a coward into bravery,\r\nor raised a drooping army to vigorous attack,\r\nor gifted a man with cause to fight who lacked.\r\nYet it is customary for a commander to give a speech,\r\nand so I will. I guess another usual reason's\r\nto get to know the troops, strangers shanghaied\r\ninto some State affair for quick reward.\r\nMaybe that applies to Polynices' troops,\r\nculled from the barbarous Spartan mobs\r\ncoming to loot our houses and rape our Moms,\r\nbut not to me and you it doesn't apply.\r\nWe grew up playing war together, low and high,\r\nwrestling in the same sandlot! Yet,\r\nit is customary for a commader to give a speech,\r\nand so I will. Our enemy, too, is our intimate,\r\nkicked sand in your faces, twisted my arm,\r\nlaughed with us and pledged love to our faces,\r\nwhich love he now demeans and disgraces.\r\nLet the measure of our former love\r\ndole out the extent of our hatred now. So far\r\nas you were his friends, that far\r\nis he a traitor. What's to say? Our\r\nmute hearts are eloquence. Yet, it is customary\r\nfor a commader to give a speech,\r\nand so I will....\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<h2>SCENE FIVE<\/h2>\n<pre>\r\n[KREON sits for 'royal' portrait.]\r\n\r\n<strong>ARTIST. <\/strong>\r\nIs it with an awkward moral cognizance\r\nthat in the rising star's dark presence\r\nI feel myself, almost, transmuted into trance?\r\nAn artist's only error is lack of diligence.\r\nDecay, corruption, malfesience spur my palette\r\nas well as hope, triumph and glory on the mallet\r\nof the supreme sculptor sit calmly folded as a wallet.\r\nAll's art an echo of the poised, Platonic Reality.\r\nChaos and the curule chair both indispensibly\r\nlitter the tones and values of my smudger's art;\r\nthe frowning brow, the virtuoso heart,\r\nboth play, unto rerun, their artist's miscast parts.\r\nDraw your face into a helmet, til resolution\r\nalone still fits on the immortal face of Kreon.\r\nExcellent, excellent. That's it.\r\n[Sounds offstage.]\r\nIs that the lithe Antigone I see? Come in and prance.\r\nQuite a face, ethereal, yet in charge, a strangeness\r\nas if she'd seized the world in a single glance\r\nand found it wanting. A greatness... of arrogance.\r\n\r\n<strong>SENTRY. <\/strong>\r\nColonel! Here's the one who... hey,\r\nis that a crown on your portrait there?\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nReport, Sentry. Artist, turn the picture.\r\n\r\n<strong>SENTRY. <\/strong>\r\nRight here, this one, caught her\r\ncarrying the dirt in her skirt, trying to twist\r\nPolynices up in a silk shroud, better his condition,\r\ngentle him up for the far side.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nAntigone...?\r\n\r\n<strong>SENTRY. <\/strong>\r\nGod throws the dice, we play the numbers.\r\nMan alive is born to wonder.\r\nI'd've sworn I wouldn't be back\r\nto see you! ...That ramrod back,\r\nthat thundery brow, the artist\r\ngot it pretty good there, way it twists....\r\n\r\n<strong>ARTIST. <\/strong>\r\nThank you, young sir.\r\n\r\n<strong>SENTRY. <\/strong>\r\nWell, one look at that, sure....\r\nI was shivering half the night, my spear\r\nrattling against my breastplate. Kept me wide-eyed, though,\r\nI'll tell you that, Colonel. Things you threatened....Whoa.\r\nWell, how'd I know she'd prance right up,\r\nkneel by his side, praying and making sup\r\nwith drippy libations. \"Solved the case,\" I told myself.\r\n\"Arrest the waif, handcuff the little elf.\"\r\nNo short-straws this time: I ran, by hell.\r\nAnd Antigone kept up with me real well.\r\nShe didn't seem shy at all out there by Polynices.\r\nGo on, take her, question her. She'll clear me.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nAntigone? A woman, and Etocles' sister?\r\n\r\n<strong>SENTRY. <\/strong>\r\nShe was heaving the dirt over him, yessir,\r\nI tell you!\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nIS. THIS. TRUE?\r\n\r\n<strong>SENTRY. <\/strong>\r\nWhat else? Unless my eyes are liars,\r\nwhat else can they say that saw her?\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nDetails, details. We'll see if your story tallies.\r\n\r\n<strong>SENTRY. <\/strong>\r\n[Gulping.] Uh, well,\r\nafter all that shouting last time,\r\nme and the boys raced back to Polynices' body,\r\nholding our uniforms over our faces from the smell,\r\nhis face going awry; brushed him clean,\r\ntouching lightly as this personal grooming\r\nmight look itself like disloyalty; knew him\r\nfrom his place on the field,\r\nmore than from his bloated looks, deep stinkpits\r\nfor eyes, a blackness of mouth, lips torn\r\nfrom a skull, not a smile, of course, but\r\nan irony there about the jaws. We sat upwind,\r\nwary and awake, I can swear. No celebrations,\r\njust us scared out of our togs, hearing the mind's moan.\r\nWe'd spear each other awake, for the State\r\nmust guard its prerogatives vigilantly.\r\nAll day nothing, and the wind getting hairy,\r\nseeming to scratch a rash on the land,\r\ndust into our watching eyes harshly fanned,\r\nbig afternoon sun obscured, dark as a bush,\r\nplain, trees, debris, all snuffed out in one whoosh,\r\na whirlwind! That should keep him clean,\r\nwe figured. Can't bury no one\r\nif the earth's up and on the go!\r\nWhirlwind lasted a long while, everything unfixed, so\r\nblurry... A dream it was, but, as with dreams,\r\nit passed on into clarity, a semi-obscene\r\npicture developing like a polaroid in the trees,\r\nstars starting to peep out again, colorless clarity,\r\neverything in our eyes pale as a corpse.\r\nSaw a scuffle in the rags, a nervous torso,\r\nand it was Antigone! She'd let out a start\r\nto see her previous day's work torn apart,\r\nPolynices made naked by the night, no cover\r\nfor the sake of respect. He's a traitor,\r\nlike you say, and I don't hold that he should\r\nget the honors a patriot'd command;\r\nbut it was right pitiful, laid out so careless\r\nwhen we'd all had a drink with him timeless\r\ntimes before, before it all. She was crying hard\r\ncrying, crying over Polynices, and then we heard\r\nher curse us, curse the damned hands on him\r\nthat undid the respect she'd risked life and limb\r\nto wrap him in. Then, from her skirt, more dirt, more!\r\nBlessed by a priest I reckon, and three or four\r\nsprinkles of fine wine, our mouths dry as dust\r\nwatching her give over for his itchy ghost\r\nthe libation to quieten him. That's when we grabbed her,\r\nand she as calm as a kitchen matron,\r\nand she didn't seemed surprised at all, not at all,\r\nbut had a calmness in her eyes, \"seeing though fate\"\r\nmy grandma calls it, even when we charged her\r\nwith the desecration of the law, she stood steady.\r\nPut me out of sorts, I'll tell you.\r\nShe gave me a slug of the wine, held me up.\r\nTold me to take her here, so I did.\r\nFeels good to get out of a death threat,\r\nbut lousy to give over another to it.\r\nBut she held my hand, said it was alright,\r\nknew what she was doing, that it was her doing, etc.\r\n(Personally, I think she was grief-crazed.)\r\nBut, here she is, and I'm safe out of it... right?\r\nNothing so safe and sweet as your own skin.\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nLift up your face. Do you confess,\r\nAntigone, to this tryst with lawlessness?\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nI deny nothing. I did it.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nDismissed. [SENTRY exits.]\r\nTell me. Tell it all. Did you even hear\r\nthe proclamation in the tramped agora, dear?\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nYou saw me standing there. Shit,\r\nwhen you broke the news to your loyal lieutenants,\r\nlining up your whore-score of votes,\r\nI knew you were a man to whom god's dignity was remote.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nAnd you defied this decree?\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nI defy. Resolutely.\r\nGod wasn't there chewing the fat,\r\njust you and your poor cohorts.\r\nJustice stays exiled to Hades, deep below,\r\nwhile men still prate and gape above. I know.\r\nOur laws change with the electorate's indifference,\r\ndie when we die, and fail along with us.\r\nAsk Etocles, he'd agree with me.\r\nYour edict, tricked out in consensus,\r\nwithers when the Eumenedies fix their eyes\r\nupon its temporary littleness.\r\nHow brief a space has man, how great his pride!\r\nAn underpaid tailor in a greenroom wardrobe\r\ntakes the godly measurements for his lonely soul,\r\ntrimming Fate to the requirements of his starring role.\r\nSpotlights add a little glow to the final disaster,\r\nmaking pride and hubris consummate faster\r\nin the fourth-act pathos of the story\r\nwhere pride of self consumes the glory\r\na humbler noticing of exacter circumstance\r\nwould assign, in careful retrospect, to chance.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nWell, don't you take the prize for pride?\r\nA woman's coarse voice roaring from a child.\r\nHoney, when you, like me, are little older\r\nyou'll submit to the wisdom of your elders.\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nI won't grow old enough to know.\r\nThe edict predicts death, and I go\r\ngladly to my exile. To the state,\r\nmy life, I won't hesitate;\r\nto the gods, all that made\r\nmy life my life-- an even trade.\r\nI knew that I was doomed to die, even before\r\nthat stuffy proclamation of yours.\r\nYou think you invented death?\r\nNot so bad, not so tough,\r\ndying after being born.\r\nDeath's an eternal grace malingering life adorns.\r\nLife is so filled with evil days and acts,\r\ndeluded Oedipus' and Jocasta's sex pact\r\nconcluding in the numb triumph of this war\r\nof brothers once equal even in your love, Kreon.\r\nHow can Death be anything but my friend,\r\nmy darkly needful helpmeet at the end?\r\nDeath will free me in its final shout,\r\nwhile guilt will bind your conscience in a knot.\r\nMy death's a footnote at best,\r\nastericked on a forgotten page in jest,\r\na silly ancillary to the argument\r\nof which your horror will be the trump.\r\nI'm a nobody. A little girl\r\nunderfoot about the house, unreal,\r\nwho only knows how much it hurt\r\nto see her brother crest the dirt,\r\ncursed by each official, proclaimed word,\r\nand left unburied for the birds.\r\nEach evil beak whose gnaw I followed\r\nbore me aloft and left me hollow.\r\n\r\n<strong>ARTIST. <\/strong>\r\nOh, Kreon, that ironic smile, hold!\r\nYou have all the spiffy dignity of a god.\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nYou think so too, Kreon? Really?\r\nKreon the Eternal! A fool convicts my folly.\r\n\r\n<strong>ARTIST. <\/strong>\r\nThe daughter shows her father's scorn,\r\nalike as acorns; hard as acorns thrown.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nI know your personal passion\r\nseems necessity and not fashion,\r\nhowever, what is and seems is a form:\r\nabsurdities decreed elevate to norms.\r\nThe horrid, undateable hunchback\r\ngiven public dignity, which he lacked,\r\ngoes in moments from abhorred\r\nto Cosmo's 'most winning bachelor.'\r\nAnd so I tell you that your passion\r\nis naught but a sixteen year old's whim,\r\ncome to your head, no doubt just lately,\r\nfrom late-night reruns of some Greek tragedy.\r\nBut if with this smote emoting you persist\r\nnot even trying to resist,\r\nI warn you, in your ignorance,\r\nhigh in your insolent tower of pretence,\r\nthat very soon you'll start to teeter,\r\nthen the long fall, in timeless millimeters,\r\npassing tidy, illuminated rooms\r\nto one dumb girl's luckless doom.\r\nEven mustangs, in their western estates,\r\ntheir stiff-necked necks must break\r\nif, once beneath a knowledgable hand they're lain,\r\nthey hesitate to obey the rein.\r\nIf you go on breaking laws\r\nwith no excusable why or licit because,\r\nand then grant a primetime interview\r\nundercutting what I'm trying to do\r\nsaying sound bites like \"God's\r\nword is my heart's sole command,\"\r\netc. and so on--- damn!\r\nThat's when the shit hits the fan.\r\nAnd all because copper Kreon was nice\r\nenough to let you escape with your life.\r\nIf I let you live, let you go,\r\nthe law's prestige in the popularity poll\r\nwill drop to zero. We're\r\nin a delicate way right now, here\r\nin Thebes, the way things are;\r\nroom in our small sky for only one star.\r\nWho's going to be telling the populace\r\nwhat's what, which regulation face\r\nto wear, how to act, what to do?\r\nDifference 'tween me and you,\r\nwhen moms gab in the produce aisle\r\nor clerks smoke by their empty files,\r\nwell, that difference gets pretty thin,\r\nslim stuff, mere wordings;\r\nthe way a phrase aligns, sometimes,\r\ncan decide what's cruel or kind.\r\nMe, I need ultra-loyal ears\r\nhearing what I need them to hear,\r\nminds thinking what I need them to think,\r\nThebes is shoved that close to the brink.\r\nRight words do justice to the State,\r\ngive the man in charge, myself, a break.\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nWhat's this got to do with my choice\r\nto bury my brother?\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\n              Your voice,\r\nand not dirt on the dead,\r\nyour voice is what I really dread.\r\n[To ARTIST:] Damned girl's bitched in the head!\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nMy dying going to make you happy?\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nI'll dance to hear hegemony\r\nhonored by the plain folks' horror\r\nshuddering respect at the deathly-whisper:\r\n\"Antigone's dead, dead, dead.\r\nAgainst her right King's rule she rebelled.\"\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nIn that case, kill me. Enough!\r\nTalk tires me out, wears my ears off.\r\nBad taste in my mouth from all this palace palaver,\r\nand I'm sure you're tired of me in a lather\r\nshooting off about the gods like a prophet,\r\nand me not hedging me bets by mandate,\r\nnot so half unsure of myself, not cutting it fine,\r\nto increase the temple donation down the line.\r\nThese soldier-stiffs propped around here\r\nlike clay Kreons-- even they'd agree with me\r\nif it weren't for your mania\r\nfor cutting the gods out of the power structure.\r\nNot everybody can shoot off his mouth\r\nlike a King.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nOnly you think that, <strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nTruth.\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nAre you really so naive?\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nThe guilt is yours, not theirs. Believe.\r\nThey obey, you defy. They are good,\r\nyou are not. They shall live, and you would....\r\nand will die. There is no overlap.\r\nYou are too naive, perhaps.\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nI honored my brother, as any would.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nBy spitting on the memory of Etocles?\r\nPolynices stabbed him in the heart, you see,\r\nwhile Etocles was defending his city.\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nI wrapped Etocles in his shroud!\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nAre a traitor and a patriot the same?\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nDeath has made them brothers again.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nAnd you are their sister. Join them.\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nLet the gods be my judges then,\r\nfor in every sign that they gave me, in every\r\ninner feeling fallen from heaven, they told me:\r\n\"Go on, don't go back on what we ask of you.\"\r\n\r\n<strong>ARTIST. <\/strong>\r\nHer reasons are inspired, true,\r\nevery artist must hold them valid.\r\nWhat are your reasons, sire, I mean colonel,\r\nsir, for prosecuting this difference, so ephemeral,\r\nbetween the dead and the dead?\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nRebellion, you idiot.\r\nThat's my reason. Don't you get it?\r\nThere was an enemy army\r\nout there day before yesterday,\r\nand a bloodletter of the royal house\r\nwaving at its head, leading the grouse.\r\nWhat am I to do, ignore such spectacles\r\nas if they were parades, spectaculars?\r\nRing the boring barracks, call out my troops\r\nto stand by and watch the show? Ridiculous!\r\nIf all my men need to help 'em think\r\nis inhale the indifferent stink\r\nof your dead brother, a dead enemy,\r\nin order to discourage mutiny\r\ndo you imagine I'll hesitate\r\nto let Polynices disintegrate\r\nand whiten into a skull out there?\r\nDon't cry. See here, see here.\r\nIt's tomorrow's bloodshed I seek to avoid;\r\nAgainst that future cost, I'll endure the goad\r\nof all the gods and holy men\r\nwomen have ever kneeled to. Amen.\r\nAnd now, when at long last\r\nI think the danger a minute past,\r\nwhat happens but that there springs\r\na traitorous viper at my heels' wings.\r\nYou, my dear Antigone!\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nMe, a threat to the State! Hardly.\r\nI'm barely old enough to get married.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nYou're old enough to disobey the law.\r\nShould my first edict command guffaws?\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nDo you really care about the crowd?\r\nShould pollsters legislate what is allowed?\r\nIs that what makes you more just,\r\nor less. More Kingly than common? It must!\r\nIs the approbation of the mob what's destined?\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nOne must always listen to the winds\r\nstirred up in the crowds' hurrahs, keep close ear\r\non their early nays and niggling whispers.\r\nA king cannot afford to isolate himself for long,\r\nexpecting distant dictation to master the throng.\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nBut won't the wise and good citizens\r\nsuspect that you relented for the dead, their kin?\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nThe mass of men....\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nThe mass of men don't really matter.\r\nWhat happens with them is chance and chatter.\r\nThey never make a decision for us,\r\nor themselves, in either calm or crisis.\r\nIf they did, then they really\r\nwould make a difference, the scales reeling....\r\nWhat a heaven we could engineer today\r\nif alabaster could be made of clay!\r\nWhat vast paradises of the common will!\r\nThe State would be awash in wisdoms, swill\r\nthe Dionysian inspiration at the cafeteria\r\nin plastic cups, manufacturing the poet's hysteria;\r\nfoolish things and idiot schemes, curtains\r\nof mauve and turquoise, would be an oddity unknown.\r\nBut what they do does not matter, for they\r\nknow not what they do. And they\r\ncannot be forgiven, no, no,\r\nfor what they cannot decide to do.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<h2>SCENE SIX<\/h2>\n<pre>\r\n[Outside tavern, fencing several weeks before the battle.]\r\n<strong>POLYNICES. <\/strong>\r\nOh, what hot work! My throat's the worst.\r\n\r\n<strong>ETOCLES. <\/strong>\r\nThese make-believe battles fight us into thirst.\r\n\r\n<strong>POLYNICES. <\/strong>\r\nIndeed. Let's get back to the tavern, fast.\r\nHaemon! Set us up with some liquid relief.\r\n[Drinks.] At last, I feel a little clear of grief.\r\nSo long those funeral trappings held me shut\r\ninto my own mind.\r\n\r\n<strong>ETOCLES. <\/strong>\r\n             Perhaps our emotional glut\r\nwill help to make us mothers of the wounded state\r\nso we can band-aid the hearts tragedy made us inherit.\r\nTo Polynices!\r\n\r\n<strong>POLYNICES. <\/strong>\r\nTo Etocles!\r\n\r\n<strong>ETOCLES. <\/strong>\r\nLet's trade bouts of drinks as titans\r\ntraded tirades with Kronos long ago.\r\n[They clink cups.] Requited!\r\n\r\n<strong>POLYNICES. <\/strong>\r\nYes. Let's drown out Neptune's trumpet\r\nby the hollow ringing of our tankards' clunking.\r\n\r\n<strong>ETOCLES. <\/strong>\r\nBarman, fill, fill.\r\n\r\n<strong>POLYNICES. <\/strong>\r\nHaemon, my closest friend still,\r\nbesides my brother Etocles, stand us a toast\r\nto prove our friendly happiness is no boast.\r\n\r\n<strong>HAEMON. <\/strong>\r\nWhich of these golden suns, now glistening,\r\nwill rise above our State as King?\r\nWith this bright pair my love to dual love has grown;\r\nLet craftsmen dovetail two elaborate thrones\r\njoined at the arm as your two strong selves\r\nare joined.\r\n\r\n<strong>ETOCLES. <\/strong>\r\nA dual kingship?\r\n\r\n<strong>HAEMON. <\/strong>\r\n                   A salve\r\nto punch us from our crutches, brothers. [Drinks.]\r\n\r\n<strong>ETOCLES. <\/strong>\r\nI hadn't thought of it, little brother.\r\n\r\n<strong>POLYNICES. <\/strong>\r\nWhy not? It seems a good solution.\r\n\r\n<strong>ETOCLES. <\/strong>\r\nSolution implies a problem.\r\n\r\n<strong>POLYNICES. <\/strong>\r\nWell....\r\n\r\n<strong>ETOCLES. <\/strong>\r\nI am the eldest, <strong>POLYNICES. <\/strong>\r\nThis you know.\r\nThat will not change, although Kronos\r\nwas overthrown. You are as special as a lover,\r\nand will continue so, a valued advisor.\r\nThus trusted and kept, even as you are now,\r\nin the office of brother.\r\n\r\n<strong>POLYNICES. <\/strong>\r\nOffice of brother? What rites or\r\nprerogatives has that? What armies can\r\n\"brother\" raise, against a cry of \"king\"?\r\n\r\n<strong>ETOCLES. <\/strong>\r\nArmies? What nonsense are you speaking?\r\n\r\n<strong>POLYNICES. <\/strong>\r\nYou know our neighbors in Sparta\r\nare ready to invade and divide our\r\nfractured State which tragedy\r\nhas already so nearly sundered.\r\nWe must have a solid front and ready display\r\nto out-face them.\r\n\r\n<strong>ETOCLES. <\/strong>\r\nKreon has courage enough to confront them.\r\n\r\n<strong>POLYNICES. <\/strong>\r\nKreon is ambitious. Kreon....\r\n\r\n<strong>ETOCLES. <\/strong>\r\nKreon? Heamon's father? His ambition\r\nextends no farther than his duty, surely.\r\nIsn't that so, Haemon?\r\n\r\n<strong>HAEMON. <\/strong>\r\nSo it seems to me. Up in the morning\r\npolishing his boots and buckler, drilling\r\nwith the soldiers back of the barracks at four....\r\n\r\n<strong>POLYNICES. <\/strong>\r\nAnd yourself, Haemon? Is your\r\nduty so small itself? Do you see your life\r\ngiven meaning by such small-minded stuff,\r\nsuch meaningless circumscription?\r\n\r\n<strong>HAEMON. <\/strong>\r\nEtocles is the eldest. Tradition\r\nwould choose him, and so would the law.\r\n\r\n<strong>POLYNICES. <\/strong>\r\nGood God.\r\n\r\n<strong>HAEMON. <\/strong>\r\nYour sister, Antigone,\r\nas you know, is promised me;\r\nbut how should such a promise hold\r\nif all the world of laws were sold\r\nto Hell? My love is with you, Polynices,\r\nbut my duty augers\r\nI should support your\r\nbrother in this quarrel.\r\n\r\n<strong>POLYNICES. <\/strong>\r\n[Aside.] Perhaps I ought to\r\nmosey on along to Sparta\r\nwhere my arguments, and not my years,\r\nwill find more amenable ears\r\nto hear what I have meant.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<h2>SCENE SEVEN<\/h2>\n<pre>\r\n[KREON is being measured for a royal gown and crown.]\r\n\r\n<strong>DRAPER. <\/strong>\r\nAnd so, the folds will flow thus and thus,\r\nthe sharpest, latest fashion for a king's a must.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nI'm not the King just yet.\r\nCoronation casts the only net\r\nthat catches rightful kings, and labors\r\nto haul them kicking to the rulers' table.\r\nLaw and tradition place on the mind\r\na subtle weight of story, of a kind\r\nthat helps to keep the chessmen of the game,\r\nhowever shopworn, virtually the same.\r\nAnd now our story's of a death,\r\nmy son's betrothed, and the comdemning breath\r\nmust be my own, for all the rules arrayed\r\nare never by king or demimonde betrayed.\r\nI shall play my predestined part.\r\nNo kingship thrives that at the start\r\nquakes uncertain as the king's own heart.\r\nLearned that in the army. Taught it, too.\r\nThat's not going to change anytime soon.\r\n\r\n<strong>DRAPER. <\/strong>\r\nAnd now the measurement for the crown.\r\nLet me tie this ribbon right. There we are.\r\nSpeaking of your son, here he comes now.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nI've said my last word on that girl\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nDo you march in here loving me, or hating me?\r\nHaemon, you've always been good.\r\nObedient, chipper. Don't change your stripes, bud.\r\n\r\n<strong>HAEMON. <\/strong>\r\nI come as your son, my father.\r\nI remember marching into the long strides\r\nyour own footsteps made in the dirt outside our house.\r\nBut when you jump into a palace,\r\nI must stretch myself another way for solace\r\nand find my course by some nearer means.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nLet that way be the law's way, Haemon.\r\nIt touches you as it touches any other citizen.\r\nYou are nearer my heart and council than any,\r\nbut if you alienate yourself from the law,\r\nyou make yourself a stranger to your father\r\nand walk beyond my helping.\r\n\r\n<strong>HAEMON. <\/strong>\r\nWon't go that way, Dad. The thing is,\r\nyou've always been my guide; you clear things up\r\nfor me, turn me straight when I would wander.\r\nI just had to come and see you. I felt confused.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nYou did the right thing. Good you came.\r\nObedience profits. Disloyalty consumes itself.\r\n\r\n<strong>DRAPER. <\/strong>\r\nGood sense, your majesty,\r\nand done up with braids of dignity.\r\n\r\n<strong>HAEMON. <\/strong>\r\nDad, remember when we walked to the temple,\r\nsizzled the entrails on the ample altar,\r\nknelt, asked about what might god decide\r\nafter Oedipus' exile and Jocasta's suicide?\r\nWe waited a long time to hear our answers,\r\nTiresias clickering over smoky coals like a geiger....\r\nand he hedged on several key points, moreover,\r\nshaving himself some room to maneuver.\r\nWisdom, he called it. Learning how to listen.\r\nYou agreed, and said that we in our mortal condition\r\nshould never push the gods for sureties.\r\nThat reason is the one gift of God to man, you see,\r\nand so damnably easy to be given the shove.\r\nI agree when you warn my reason's lost for love.\r\nIt'd be a stunt for a child to engineer\r\nhis Dad's tragic fate into the clear,\r\nor show him how to act and think. But,\r\nif my reason is God's gift, hear it out!\r\nLet whatever divinity shines at my lips' brim\r\nlight on you, illuminating what's within.\r\nIts reasonable to learn while on your ass,\r\nknocked there or in a paid chair, class is class.\r\n\r\n<strong>DRAPER. <\/strong>\r\nMy chalks and knots encode my sire's height.\r\nI mean, sir, sire. But, the boy says right,\r\nno uniform complements even the most strict\r\nofficer if it pinches in too tight.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nA Dad get spanked by his wanking kid?\r\nOh I'll wail back to my mother's skirts in a trice\r\nbefore I'll listen to such childish advice.\r\n\r\n<strong>HAEMON. <\/strong>\r\nIf I'm not right, I'm wrong. Fair enough.\r\nBut if I'm right? What notice takes the right\r\nof youth, or age, or anything but being right?\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nWhat's right? Right to be on the side\r\nof damned anarchy, boy?\r\n\r\n<strong>HAEMON. <\/strong>\r\nNo, no I don't. I don't truck with crooks.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nAin't that little girl a criminal?\r\n\r\n<strong>HAEMON. <\/strong>\r\nA criminal girl? Because she grieves?\r\nThe entire city populace would deny it.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nThe city, eh? They to teach me how to rule\r\nwho's been commanding men since I gained my age?\r\n\r\n<strong>HAEMON. <\/strong>\r\nYour shooting off teenage-like enough now.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nFrom one voice comes rule, comes clarity.\r\nDidn't we have enough confusion already\r\nwith those two tawny brothers grasping\r\nfor the one solar spotlight, both together gasping,\r\ngrasping and tearing and muddying things?\r\nOne voice alone can bring things plain,\r\nhelp straighten out scribbled melodies again,\r\nerect all things aright. You'll see.\r\n\r\n<strong>HAEMON. <\/strong>\r\nOne horn don't make a symphony.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nThe conductor is the symphony!\r\nI am the State. Way it is, way its got to be.\r\n\r\n<strong>HAEMON. <\/strong>\r\nYeah, if the State's a deserted isle.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nMy boy... selling out to a mere girl,\r\nthe most powerless member of the community.\r\n\r\n<strong>HAEMON. <\/strong>\r\nIf you're a girl, Daddy,\r\nthen I'm a sell-out, proud to be, the only\r\nperson I'm worried about now is you.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nWorried about who?\r\nWrite \"love\" on your fist\r\nand strike my gut, sinking to the wrist!\r\nAll you're worried about is getting even\r\nwith the man transformed into Antigone's demon.\r\n\r\n<strong>HAEMON. <\/strong>\r\nIs it better that our new King wrestle\r\nagainst Justice in the streets? Is that your stance?\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nAll I do is within my rights as ruler.\r\n\r\n<strong>HAEMON. <\/strong>\r\nDosen't that attitude strike you as insular?\r\nRights of the gods don't start from you, Dad.\r\nYou're only right is the right you always had:\r\nto listen if the conscience of Justice is speaking, sir.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nShit of a son! Sucked from me by a fucking girl!\r\nWhat has she done to you? Have you two slept....\r\nI'd have you hung as an example, but hate\r\nthe cost of a court marshall, and demure.\r\n\r\n<strong>HAEMON. <\/strong>\r\nYou're not my Dad, that's for sure.\r\nOut of remembered honor only am I terse\r\nand keep from calling you utterly perverse.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nSeduced boy! Pussy-\r\nwhipped! Don't you bandy\r\nblank words with me!\r\n\r\n<strong>HAEMON. <\/strong>\r\nNo. I'll let you be the talker.\r\nAfter all, you're the State. I'm the gawker.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\n[To GUARD.]\r\nEvery great leader needs a great obeyer.\r\nNow get on out of here and slay her.\r\n\r\n<strong>HAEMON. <\/strong>\r\nI'm not taken in by any vileness, father.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nBut every word of yours is hers!\r\n\r\n<strong>HAEMON. <\/strong>\r\nWhat did she say to you?\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nThat she would gladly give her life\r\nfor the sake of the law! Better answer than yours.\r\n\r\n<strong>HAEMON. <\/strong>\r\nMy answers look after you, seek you.\r\nTrying to find myself, my meaning,\r\nin all of us. Where are the gods in this room?\r\n\r\n<strong>DRAPER. <\/strong>\r\nSir, if I may....\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nDISMISSED!!\r\n\r\n<strong>HAEMON. <\/strong>\r\nDismissed?\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nYou will never marry her, you know,\r\nnot while she breathes. Her only marriage bed\r\nwill be the dirty earth.\r\n\r\n<strong>HAEMON. <\/strong>\r\nThen she will soon be dead;\r\nbut her dying kills one more, now.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nOne more? Who? Senseless son,\r\nare you threatening rebellion?\r\nWould you hold your life in opposition\r\nto me and your own bleeding reason?\r\n\r\n<strong>HAEMON. <\/strong>\r\nHow can I oppose my father?\r\nHe's already dead. Cancelled, rather,\r\na prime time TV soap opera type,\r\nglossy victim of his own hype.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nI hope you live to regret this son,\r\nregret these airs you're putting on;\r\nin your ripe old age is where you and I\r\nwill finally agree, when we lay side by side\r\nin the military graveyard of the State.\r\n\r\n<strong>HAEMON. <\/strong>\r\nYeah, Dad. Yeah. It's a date.\r\nAnd when the long sullen hearse\r\nglides to the curb in reverse,\r\nI'll load your corpse with tidbits,\r\nhonors and flowers and all that shit,\r\njust as much, and to the same degree,\r\nas you bothered with the body of Polynices.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nYou are nothing. I am the State.\r\n\r\n<strong>HAEMON. <\/strong>\r\nRave on, with your insane mission;\r\nyou have no friends who'll listen.\r\nYou won't see me again. My eyes,\r\nKing Kreon, shall not see her die.   [Exit.]\r\n\r\n<strong>DRAPER. <\/strong>\r\nThis doesn't look right, my leige.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nDoesn't look right? Will you instruct me now\r\non how to run the country, toga-maker?\r\n\r\n<strong>DRAPER. <\/strong>\r\nSire, I only....\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nNot anyone's sire yet, ay?\r\nAntigone I will carry far, far away\r\nuntil she becomes, like an enemy over a cliff,\r\na worry discarded. Out in the walless wilderness,\r\nsealed in a vast vault of living stone.\r\nHonor the dead, she says? We must atone?\r\nShe wants to honor the dead so much,\r\nlet her join 'em. Oh, well, I won't, as such,\r\ncondemn her quite to death. Requiescat?\r\nLet her gods' laws do that.\r\nFood in the tomb, some vinegared water,\r\nas the custom has it, freeing the State\r\nfrom the killing cobra-strike\r\nof her demise. I bear no spiking spite.\r\nLet her pious declamations\r\nring in her ruined tomb unheard, unquestioned.\r\nMaybe then she'll learn-- too late!--\r\nthat piety and pity shouldn't be wasted on the dead!\r\nThen let her prate.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<h2>SCENE EIGHT<\/h2>\n<pre>\r\n[Four months before the battle,\r\nbetrothal picnic of Antigone.]\r\n\r\n<strong>JOCASTA. <\/strong>\r\nLet's toll up our tipping pile of lucks:\r\nPlague, with its slopping vomit-buckets,\r\ndisinfectants, crosses and cadavers,\r\nhas changed its intrusive thermometers\r\nfor warm milk, gingersnaps, and peace\r\nhow many happy years ago now, Oedipus?\r\n\r\n<strong>OEDIPUS. <\/strong>\r\nEnough for the dark daughter of our nights\r\nto have blossomed up to betrothal height\r\nand look on the plauge-sick infant, Haemon,\r\nwith eyes that dare tramsform him to a man.\r\n\r\n<strong>JOCASTA. <\/strong>\r\n[Ironically.] Then let us give to the nodding gods\r\ngood thanksgiving, who might marr our odds\r\nor dog our days with devastation and death's disgrace\r\nif we forget to hide in hands our grateful face.\r\n\r\n<strong>OEDIPUS. <\/strong>\r\nNormal joys are worn away by lapping lassitude,\r\nthe timerous ticks of waves, days, ingratitudes.\r\nLet the playful peace that we have got\r\nstand a statue, eternal horseman, who trots\r\nforever on his shining, prancing hinds.\r\nDon't throw rotten rocks at his high behind.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nAmen.\r\n\r\n<strong>OEDIPUS. <\/strong>\r\nAnd then,\r\nyou know today our dear Antigone\r\nis to be betrothed to Kreon's Haemon.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nThe great gods in their cloudy watchtower\r\ndemand our vital vigilance each turn of each hour\r\nor else all our feasts and bridal fetes\r\ndecay to fatal famines.\r\n\r\n<strong>JOCASTA. <\/strong>\r\nI won't forget.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nI lived here through the plague a boy\r\nand discipline was all that held us steady\r\nuntil you came with your magic words.\r\n\r\n<strong>OEDIPUS. <\/strong>\r\nWell... I did what I could.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nAnd were well rewarded with a Kingship.\r\n\r\n<strong>JOCASTA. <\/strong>\r\nWe were all so glad you gave Fate the slip.\r\nEven you, Kreon, who stood in line just after Laius,\r\nacclaimed our savior Oedipus to the dais.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nHe who has use of the law must be\r\nrespected and obeyed by all, your majesties,\r\neverything you say is quite correct. Never otherwise.\r\n\r\n<strong>OEDIPUS. <\/strong>\r\nHere comes your Haemon now, Kreon.\r\n\r\n<strong>JOCASTA. <\/strong>\r\nOn his armored arm, Antigone.\r\n\r\n<strong>OEDIPUS. <\/strong>\r\nAnd her brothers revelling after the pair.\r\n\r\n<strong>JOCASTA. <\/strong>\r\nAnd teasing them.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nWhile she twirls her glistering hair.\r\n\r\n<strong>ETOCLES. <\/strong>\r\nWhy don't you loves swear your vows\r\nand stitch your poverty of two into one double dower.\r\n\r\n<strong>POLYNICES. <\/strong>\r\nHold your dovetailed hands like Spring and Winter,\r\nthen summer's transcendence we'll truly enter.\r\n\r\n<strong>HAEMON. <\/strong>\r\nI'm too young yet. And Antigone's younger.\r\n\r\n<strong>POLYNICES. <\/strong>\r\nOh come on, don't be a stickler.\r\n\r\n<strong>ETOCLES. <\/strong>\r\nLeave that to your dad and his hoard of orders.\r\n\r\n<strong>HAEMON. <\/strong>\r\nDad's right about more things more\r\noften, than anyone else I know, including Tiresias.\r\n\r\n<strong>POLYNICES. <\/strong>\r\nOh ho! Colonel Kreon out-guesses\r\nprophets now! That's some soldier's discipline there.\r\nMust be all those camp-outs peering at the stars.\r\n\r\n<strong>ETOCLES. <\/strong>\r\nDon't mock, Polynices.\r\n\r\n<strong>POLYNICES. <\/strong>\r\nI know, I know. It isn't \"nices.\"\r\n\r\n<strong>ETOCLES. <\/strong>\r\nIt was Tiresias' boiled-blind eyes that saw\r\nthe kinks of Kreon's fate in a shooting star\r\nstitching quick through six constellations\r\nbefore it flashed and faded out behind the yellow moon.\r\nThat forebodes high office and fabled towers,\r\ncontrol of men and fates on earth. Much power.\r\n\r\n<strong>POLYNICES. <\/strong>\r\nThat's ancient history. You make your chance.\r\nThat's what all philosophers of free-trade\r\nin the agora say all day, if you pay your way.\r\n\r\n[Boys laugh and go off.]\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nI would swear my soul to you today.\r\n\r\n<strong>HAEMON. <\/strong>\r\nAnd it is here, in warm human awe,\r\nthat true blue duty shifts wish to law.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<h2>SCENE NINE<\/h2>\n<pre>\r\n[ANTIGONE's tomb. ISMENE is decorating it,\r\nfuneral-bride style.]\r\n\r\n<strong>ISMENE. <\/strong>\r\n\r\nLupin, verbane\r\nleverets, eyebright\r\nkingcup, cockscomb\r\npennywort, soapwort\r\nspeedwell, groundsel\r\ncottongrass, scabiosae\r\nyarrow arrowroot\r\nchervil, marestail, teazel....\r\nSweet flowers, brighten this tomb around me,\r\ngive my eye a safe place for retreating reverie.\r\nAlthough here is so much of what's beautiful and best,\r\nI cannot think of her but hurt.\r\nI see Antigone, and I cry. Oh flowers,\r\nephemeral, eternal, sweet, idiotic powers,\r\nhow can you still be cheerful, and not crack,\r\ntrading all your rainbow looks for black?\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\n Do you look at me with pity, sister?\r\nDo not, although the Archeron flow faster\r\nfor the down-draw of my downfall.\r\nMy voice mixed with Death's will all\r\nbe mumbling sleepy night-talk soon,\r\nas I whisper in the ears of my brothers, gone\r\ninto that eternal, ephemeral, emerald glade\r\nwhere all flowers are of nightshade.\r\n\r\n<strong>ISMENE. <\/strong>\r\n Yes, you'll die. Its the common lot\r\nof all that lives to consummate in rot.\r\nDown in your dirty grave, the final horror\r\nof decayed, vampirish, drear decor,\r\nthere will shine a kind of honor\r\nalien to those of us who die at random,\r\nkilled singly, or undone in tandem---\r\nfor you have chosen ruin with willful love\r\nand with brave lonliness all human law\r\ndenied. You never bowed before a tinsel sword.\r\nEven to the dead, you never went back on your word.\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nEndless rain in the underworld,\r\nthey say; limitless drippings, whirled\r\nbeneath bone-cold feet, while grave ghosts stare\r\ndemanding to know why they are there.\r\nGathered darks and frozen omens,\r\nthe dead themselves only half-sensible\r\nas in an interrupted dream. I feel\r\nthe loneliness of death all too well.\r\n\r\n<strong>ISMENE. <\/strong>\r\n So, all glory for you is gone?\r\nNone in this world, none in the one beyond?\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nYou're laughing at me, Ismene.\r\nTell true, you can't wait until I'm dead, can you?\r\nOne less trouble under you legs,\r\nracing to my disaster impelled by dear ideals\r\nthe law mocks, and you feel\r\ntoo self-indulgent to be real.\r\n\r\n<strong>ISMENE. <\/strong>\r\n Far past that brightness where\r\nhuman hearts alight and dare\r\nyour high heart has taken you, Antigone.\r\nLook around. To the halls of justice you have come.\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nTrees and rivers of this Thebes,\r\nweep for me, if you will, I have seen\r\nyour gods, obeyed, and was unjustly judged.\r\nThis is the place you pointed out. I didn't budge.\r\nWhen I came here, I came flying\r\nto the stone hole of justice, grieving, dying.\r\nNow  I'll sleep in the abandoned bridebed\r\nwhere my father and his mother did\r\nit, and made me. Crime, crime, deep infection,\r\nbleakness beyond what we see of meaning....\r\nTheir marriage worms up from the grave,\r\neating my hope, killing my marriage.\r\nAnd now I'm the stranger in my own home-place,\r\nhomeless.\r\n\r\n<strong>ISMENE. <\/strong>\r\n You came to death at your own pace,\r\nnevertheless.\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nLet me go, let me die.\r\nTruth is a hard word to hear, to say.\r\nThe sun removes itself from my eye,\r\nleaving everything vast and cold and sick.\r\nLead me to my last vigil, quick, quick,\r\nbefore I dissolve, empty\r\nof lamentaions and of loves.\r\nMy passions have drained me.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nIf a dirge-ditty could keep death back,\r\nthe first man would still be wailing at the crack\r\nof the first grave ever made.\r\nThrow her in; the place is prepared.\r\nDistribute the honeycakes. If the gods,\r\ndetermined to to distribute unevely the odds,\r\ngive her sustinace as they impelled rebellion,\r\nshe shall live. Our hands are clean.\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nOur family darkness gathers in the tomb,\r\nUncle, pressing every instance of light out of the room\r\nexecution has made too suddenly, awkwardly cozy.\r\nI die unbrided, my children locked in me as a rose is\r\nlocked and loaded into its miniature seed.\r\nHow easily discarded are those things once known as need.\r\nNow deep, too deep, within ungerminating rock\r\nmy designs to be a bride eternally are mocked,\r\na Michaelangelo statue giving me the finger.\r\nNever let my loving Haemon linger\r\nhere where all my hopes are bedded,\r\nwrithing within the stone that I have wedded.\r\nBe witnesses for me, thin, effectless ghosts!\r\nI poured the holy libation, I covered Polynices,\r\ndeparted Dead, according to your laws and ways!\r\nMy own hand grows spectral before my face,\r\nI dissolve and all my future intent's replaced\r\nby a story told and over with. Remember, Ismene,\r\nmy story, although you have opposed me.\r\nSay what I have done, and repeat it carefully\r\nall your days, for the dead forget, they say,\r\nand wander in dimensionless mist,\r\nalways moaning on about old crimes, listless.\r\n\r\n<strong>ISMENE. <\/strong>\r\n O passionate heart!\r\nAs unyeilding as tormented!\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nGuards!\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nThe voice of death!\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nI can't say if you're mistaken, Antigone.\r\nAs these guards bind you, so my duty binds me.\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nLast sad daughter of a string of kings,\r\ndamned by the confusion of confusing things,\r\na maiden butterfly bereft of wings.\r\nUnhappy kings, all unthroned to Hades,\r\nwhere already in thought my thrown shade is,\r\nyou will recall what sadnesses have occured here,\r\nhere, in my heart. See what I've suffered, dears,\r\nat these hands, incautious, abrupt,\r\nbut always royal, even when they cuffed\r\na girl curled against them in her ribbon stuff.\r\nAnd still, after all, they think themselves human,\r\nbut I kept first the ordinance of Heaven.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<h2>SCENE TEN<\/h2>\n<pre>\r\n[Years earlier. ETOCLES and POLYNICES are\r\nchildren, rollerskating. ANTIGONE a babe.]\r\n\r\n<strong>POLYNICES. <\/strong>\r\nI cry with a wild cry.\r\nYou chase me just to waste me. Why?\r\nHigh-speed, here's <strong>ETOCLES. <\/strong>\r\nI feel\r\nin my neck the rollerskate's solid wheel.\r\nMonkey's uncle! Mercy, Etocles!\r\nYour foot is really squishing me!\r\n\r\n<strong>ETOCLES. <\/strong>\r\nSay it. Pray it.\r\nThis dog's day isn't over yet.\r\n\r\n<strong>POLYNICES. <\/strong>\r\nOh... Etocles.\r\n\r\n<strong>ETOCLES. <\/strong>\r\nSay it.\r\n<strong>POLYNICES. <\/strong>\r\nPlease... please....\r\n\r\n<strong>ETOCLES. <\/strong>\r\nSay it.\r\n\r\n<strong>POLYNICES. <\/strong>\r\nYou're just as meany mean\r\nas old Unc' Kreon.\r\n\r\n<strong>ETOCLES. <\/strong>\r\nFiend.\r\nSay it. Or I'll make you double-time\r\nmarch until... until dinnertime!\r\n\r\n<strong>POLYNICES. <\/strong>\r\nDinnertime!\r\n\r\n<strong>ETOCLES. <\/strong>\r\nSay it!\r\n\r\n<strong>POLYNICES. <\/strong>\r\n[sing-songs.]\r\nWhen we're ready to be princes\r\nbeloved in the world's embraces,\r\nplastered on the summer magazines\r\nkept in adolescent dreams obscene,\r\npoked and prodded, adored, implored,\r\nby the tired mechanics of Fame's one door,\r\nit's Etocles, not me, who'll be\r\nthe glass of fashion, and king. You'll see.\r\nIt's Etocles, not me,\r\nnot me, it's Etocles who'll be....\r\nIt's Etocles, not me,\r\nnot me, you'll see, it's Etocles\r\nwho will grow up to be\r\nking of everthing he sees.\r\nEtocles, Etocles,\r\nnot me, not me.\r\n\r\n<strong>ETOCLES. <\/strong>\r\nOK. Good enough; get up.\r\nIt's almost time to wash and sup.\r\n\r\n<strong>POLYNICES. <\/strong>\r\nMy neck is cricked\r\nyou prick.\r\n\r\n<strong>ETOCLES. <\/strong>\r\nWanna play \"soverign and his councillors\"?\r\n\r\n<strong>POLYNICES. <\/strong>\r\nNah... What a bore.\r\nIt's Antigone I wanta check out.\r\nSee if her bunched-up face is normal yet.\r\n\r\n<strong>ETOCLES. <\/strong>\r\nAll right. To the nurse! Double-time!\r\n<strong>POLYNICES. <\/strong>\r\nYou said no double-time.\r\n\r\n<strong>ETOCLES. <\/strong>\r\nDid not. I said double-time til dinnertime\r\nif you did not crown me king. That's not\r\na promise of no double-time, it's a threat.\r\n\r\n<strong>POLYNICES. <\/strong>\r\nSame thing, silly.\r\n\r\n<strong>ETOCLES. <\/strong>\r\nNot really....\r\n\r\n[Enter NURSE and JOCASTA.]\r\n\r\n<strong>JOCASTA. <\/strong>\r\nToday Kreon returns with his forecast.\r\nI never saw anyone so certain and self-assured\r\nso anxious about the half-sayings of the prophets\r\nand fortune-throwers.\r\n\r\nNURSE. I'd have thought it would fall\r\nbeneath his dignity to get any advice at all.\r\n\r\n[Enter OEDIPUS.]\r\n\r\n<strong>OEDIPUS. <\/strong>\r\nDon't let crass Kreon fool you girls.\r\nHis crew-cut style hides feigning wiles.\r\nHalf his dignity's his uniform,\r\npressed and polished, that's his norm.\r\n\r\n<strong>JOCASTA. <\/strong>\r\nThat's the visitor's pipping trumpet.\r\nLet greedy ears hear what the prophet said.\r\n\r\n<strong>OEDIPUS. <\/strong>\r\nYes, let's.\r\n\r\n[Enter KREON.]\r\n\r\n<strong>OEDIPUS. <\/strong>\r\nWell, Kreon, what news from on high?\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nSuch news as might make stone men sigh.\r\n\r\nNURSE. Oh, sir, look at his face! I, I....\r\n\r\n<strong>OEDIPUS. <\/strong>\r\nHere, take a pull on my flask.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nA dark and dirty task\r\nhas been assigned to hard-pressed Thebes.\r\n\r\n<strong>OEDIPUS. <\/strong>\r\nThen we'll launder it to light's reprieve.\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nIts a pollution from long ago.\r\nA splotch that necessities did throw\r\nfrom our minds. Can't think about honor\r\non an empty stomach, or you'll double sorrow.\r\nNor when half the city's sick with plague.\r\n\r\n<strong>OEDIPUS. <\/strong>\r\nThe Sphinx gave me a promise. She did not renege\r\nwhen I solved her riddle about the legs.\r\nI'll do the same for this problem. And simply,\r\nnow that I'm the King, and it's my responsibility.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nWell, it's a real riddle again, right enough.\r\n\r\n<strong>OEDIPUS. <\/strong>\r\nHmm. These augers often play with double tongues\r\nand curse those who most expect a kiss.\r\nI'd rather not be a patsy in their plots.\r\n\r\n<strong>JOCASTA. <\/strong>\r\nBut what choice have we got?\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nNone.\r\n\r\n<strong>OEDIPUS. <\/strong>\r\nSuch is the whim of God. Let's hear the knot.\r\nWhat can we do, but be good guessers\r\nand attempt all the obstacles in life, the greater and lesser,\r\ntripping and leaping by turns?\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nShrewdly said, sire. There is a stain....\r\n\r\n<strong>OEDIPUS. <\/strong>\r\nSo you said. Make yourself plain.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nA blotch... a murder.\r\n\r\nNURSE. Murder!\r\n\r\n<strong>OEDIPUS. <\/strong>\r\nBut there is no murder, unless I err.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nBrutal and ruinous, and the culprit\r\nstill at large. \"Laius,\" said the voice, I still hear it:\r\n\"Laius; find his killer, or mighty Thebes is no more.\"\r\n\r\n<strong>OEDIPUS. <\/strong>\r\nBut he was killed long before\r\nI even got here!\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nOracles can be pretty rough.\r\n\r\n<strong>OEDIPUS. <\/strong>\r\nOh, this makes the puzzle tough.\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nMurdered on the open road; the man\r\nand his entire entourage..or, nearly. And\r\nnow the gods, going through the oracle's cold throat\r\ncommand we track the killer or they get our goat.\r\n\r\n<strong>OEDIPUS. <\/strong>\r\nWhy wasn't this matter devined\r\ntime out of mind, long sad years ago? I mind\r\na regicide loose in Thebes!\r\nFor all I know, I could be next!\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nAnarchies.\r\nThat's why we dawdled as detectives.\r\nWasn't looked into because of the plague;\r\nfolks passing out in the streets, faces greyed,\r\ndead as the weather in yesterday's papers. Dead inks.\r\nNo time then for any riddle but the Sphinx's.\r\n\r\n<strong>OEDIPUS. <\/strong>\r\nOnce more it seems my task\r\nto disgorge these dark things until they bask\r\nin the temperate light of day. To my head,\r\nit is good and lawful to honor the dead,\r\nnever too late to set things straight with heaven,\r\nblot out evil wherever it lies hidden.\r\nIn my own mind's quiet self-report\r\nI can scan nothing more important.\r\n\r\n[Enter the children, screaming and running.]\r\n\r\n<strong>OEDIPUS. <\/strong>\r\nChildren, enough! The time\r\nfor play has come and gone.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<h2>SCENE ELEVEN<\/h2>\n<pre>\r\n[Coronation of KREON.]\r\n\r\n<strong>ANNOUNCER. <\/strong>\r\nLet this chosen of the gods\r\nbe shown of special promise and strictest bond\r\nto guide the stray arrangents of our state\r\nwith kingly competence, and put no bad act\r\nbefore the eternal temperance divinely given\r\nwhen gods attempt to teach justice to men.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nBeneath this State vestment I must frown\r\nand find my fellows lacking as I turn round\r\nviewing the world from the gold hedge and ground\r\nof your principle endowment: this crown of crowns\r\nor haughty scepter whose powers enforce\r\na king's singular essence of moral choice.\r\nThese tidings and these trinkets\r\nI accept without a blink, yet\r\nI acknowledge they were only theived\r\nfrom you, dear citizens of Thebes.\r\nHaving so lately defended yourselves\r\nfrom a most horrible attack upon your homes,\r\nI take it in victory, and in sacred trust,\r\nthat civic will and private itch keep us robust.\r\n\r\n<strong>TIRESIAS. <\/strong>\r\nAbove me, a pretty speech cries out.\r\nWho speaks? He has the rough measure of Kreon\r\nof old, but talks of citizens and kings, not men,\r\nhorses, battle, and such warlike use of words\r\nas was his common way when I knew him good.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nIt's me, <strong>TIRESIAS. <\/strong>\r\nYour boy has eyes.\r\nDoesn't he tell you when to bow before a king?\r\n<strong>TIRESIAS. <\/strong>\r\nKing? King? I thought you just said\r\nyou were <strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nI know your voice. You are.\r\nNow, how is a Colonel a king? Tell me boy,\r\nfor this Kreon is trying out a jest.\r\nI guess for everything there's a first.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nYou've stumbled into a coronation, prophet.\r\nWere you looking to sadden some widow before her time?\r\nPlease, don't let me detain you.\r\n\r\n<strong>TIRESIAS. <\/strong>\r\nThere's many I might make sad today.\r\nYourself not least, <strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nListen to what I say.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nI don't recall ever NOT listening, Tiresias.\r\n\r\n<strong>TIRESIAS. <\/strong>\r\nGood. You've done one good thing there, wise.\r\nA good start for a new king, indeed.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nYes, yes. To you I'm indebted for past deeds\r\nand prophacies. But what new fate comes today?\r\n\r\n<strong>TIRESIAS. <\/strong>\r\nListen: Kreon, once more you sway\r\nuneasily on the bladed edge of some great fate.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nWhat's this? Your words discombobulate.\r\n\r\n<strong>TIRESIAS. <\/strong>\r\nKreon, Kreon, can't you tell\r\nfrom the trembling insistance of my prophet's yell,\r\nI'm giving you a chance too oft denied\r\nby Fate's roulette wheel busy spinning in its pride.\r\nThe gods who blinded me are blessing you;\r\nbut they've handed it off to me to tell you what to do.\r\nYou know that little chair I've got up on the mountain,\r\nset wildly high, where geysers shrink to fountains,\r\nand the humungous ocean is reduced\r\nto a puddle children's feet traduce?\r\nWell, I was sitting there, feeling the sunlight\r\nand the air, and the birds that make it to heaven's light,\r\nand back, swirled all around me, all set a-chatter\r\n(nothing too unusual in a prophet's business matters)\r\nwhen out of their beaks there came contrasted\r\nthis sound that just, well, it sort of blasted\r\nmore than anything else; human in that screechfest,\r\nlike a child being dissected in an eagle's nest,\r\na person's voice set alight by the gods and burning,\r\na bonfire of consciousness, pure flame roaring\r\nout of the anonymities gathered there.\r\nThere was a fight set off between 'em all in the air,\r\na seriousness of division like a war, wing-whirr\r\nand furiousness. I put my hand out for the boy,\r\ngot him to swear up and down what he tol'\r\nwas what was happening. Didn't trust the, the\r\nextraordinariness of it at all, too uncanny,\r\nI thought, but the gods've left me dangling,\r\nand brought me round to stranger things.\r\nHere's what he saw, the boy, what my ears witnessed,\r\nand no mistake: some of the bigger crows had hissed\r\na little dove over on its back, flayed out the wings\r\nwhile a series of flyers looped low to sting\r\nat the virgin breast, ripped and ripped, ceased\r\nwhen a human voice leapt out of the distressed beast,\r\nfar louder than its size, a widow's moan\r\nthat in that violence was a sound alone.\r\nWhen all was done, and no more to be heard,\r\nI put my thumb in the open bowl of the bird,\r\ntrying to feel how the heart made out, what state\r\nit was in for the augury, and I gave a start,\r\nalmost put my old thumb through that dove's ribs\r\nand out the back, felt liver, and lungs, some greasy tid-bits,\r\nbut the heart, well, that was pecked completely\r\nout, an absent mansion in my hand waiting\r\nfor it to flap back and start pumping. I was lost!\r\nWhat could it all mean at this point?\r\nDidn't know what to think, retreated out-of-joint\r\nto my usual altar fires and such like.\r\nBut Hephastos failed me. Fire and no smoke,\r\nno sign rising from destruction that should choke\r\nblack the heavenly skies. That's a fact.\r\nI was in a panic. All the earth was out of whack!\r\nSonny, some things start out serious, stay that way\r\nto the grave. This is one of 'em. What I say.\r\nEverybody makes mistakes, no matter how exalted,\r\ndiligence is needed to see what the fault is\r\nas well as to carry on with a difficult chore.\r\nThe gods chortle at our morose doings, none more\r\nthan our puffing up in pride and staying puffed.\r\nBut when goodness licks out of a man like holy fire\r\nand by its light he sees his wrongs, and does\r\nsomething, anything almost, to fix 'em up in gods' eyes,\r\nthat diminishes the evil, sets it at naught,\r\nif done timely and with a sincere heart. Kreon,\r\nthink about things, who's standing up for the gods'\r\nold ways in spite of man? Don't conflict\r\nby policy with what moves above us... Ain't politic.\r\nOrdering strong men to swim in armor,\r\nmarch a million miles; orders have an issuer,\r\nbut results are not guaranteed. Kreon,\r\nthis Antigone thing.... It goes against God.\r\nI've seen it, and ran here. Best tell Kreon, I thought,\r\nhe's always kept a level head on and whatnot.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nBirds of Zeus! Are you sure your boy\r\ndidn't whistle while you dozed in prophetic joy,\r\nperhaps sipping too much of that bacchic wine\r\nthat brings insightful frenzy to the near-divine?\r\nCan't my coronation day, in a country wide-\r\nopen with a peace we've earned, be free\r\nof these nasty natterings and edgy anxieties?\r\nNo, Tiresias, even if your lauded eagles\r\ncarried Polynices up to heaven, regal\r\nbit by stinking bit, I'd not yeild at all.\r\nAll my life I've put up with fortune-tellers;\r\nHe defied me in life, let his death be the exemplar!\r\nI didn't pollute any temples, was always solemn.\r\nThe gods themselves are immune to us, no man can smack 'em.\r\nYou'll have to go elsewhere, go away\r\nwith your filthy business, I won't pay\r\nto have my brightest day ruined by some\r\nsour old blind man with his abacus of curses. Come,\r\nGather 'round! Tiresias sells his wisdom\r\nto the highest bidder! Worthless words for hire!\r\n\r\n<strong>TIRESIAS. <\/strong>\r\nIs there no man left inside you to fear the fire?\r\nAre you so completely withered to this length,\r\na single conceit of earthly power and tyrant-strength\r\nthat you, an armored prawn, would defy augury and all\r\nthat heaven gives in grace to the earth? It appalls!\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nAll right. Give us the phony aphorism.\r\nHere's a dangled drachma for your boy-whore jism.\r\n\r\n<strong>TIRESIAS. <\/strong>\r\nIs there no man left in you who'll\r\nknow that wisdom outweighs any wealth, you fool!\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nRight. And bribes are baser than any baseness.\r\n\r\n<strong>TIRESIAS. <\/strong>\r\nBribes leave both the giver and taker with less.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nI would not presume to counter a prophet\r\nwho's so good at counting what's in his pocket.\r\n\r\n<strong>TIRESIAS. <\/strong>\r\nDo you still say my prophecy's for sale?\r\nThat for some monkish junk I'd sell the Grail?\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nProphets have always thought it a touch too keen\r\nto catch the sordid future in a drachma's gleam.\r\n\r\n<strong>TIRESIAS. <\/strong>\r\nAnd kings have always loved warrior's brass,\r\nand the brassy brayings of their own voices!\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nWatch it! Your king stands before you.\r\n\r\n<strong>TIRESIAS. <\/strong>\r\nI know it. I prophecied that too.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nYou, Tiresias, are not without talent.\r\nBut foreseeing my rise may not be thought\r\ntoo spectacular. No one worked so hard for their fate,\r\ntrimming my sails, and staying up late,\r\nstabbing back at intrigue, watching for my chances.\r\nFace it Tiresias, a lucky guess. And now my guess is,\r\nwell, now you've completely sold out.\r\n\r\n<strong>TIRESIAS. <\/strong>\r\nSire, fatal words are in my throat.\r\nDo not unclasp their lock. There is no antidote.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nHere. Place this coin under your tongue,\r\nthat useless lock for those flapping gums,\r\nand unburden yourself of your bleak words.\r\nBut remember, no matter what is said or heard,\r\nno further coin will I give you for defiance,\r\nalthough maybe I'd pay for some uncommon silence.\r\n\r\n<strong>TIRESIAS. <\/strong>\r\nAlthough these words charge your life in fee,\r\nyet, you cannot afford my silent tranquility.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nNo doubt. No doubt. I'm listening.\r\nYour audience stands attentive, prevaricating performer.\r\n\r\n<strong>TIRESIAS. <\/strong>\r\nVery well, then. Take this, Kreon,\r\nand take deep to heart! Not much father will\r\nthe days advance upon your royal time\r\nwhen you shall be charged to pay all\r\nback that you have taken: corpse for corpse\r\nand flesh of your flesh shall pay the price!\r\nYou thrust one wondering child of light\r\ninto damned antechambers of soul's night---\r\ninnocent Antigone, who kept to the gods\r\nand did not stray, into Hades too terribly sudden,\r\nliving in night before she's made a shade.\r\nAlso, you have perversely kept above the dust\r\nanother soul, marooned here on the earth's crust\r\nthat should have been with dignity interred.\r\nOne graved before her death, the other denied\r\nholy sanction of a burial. These are your crimes,\r\nKreon. Fear the Furies and the dark of time.\r\nFear the great, dim gods of Hell:\r\nTheir punishment is moving swift and fell.\r\nSo swift and sure their flight at you\r\nthat you cannot even hear the fatal arrow\r\nfletched by my prophacy. Are these the words,\r\nKreon, for which you wished and paid?\r\nSoon, soon, as night and day revolve again\r\naround your guilt, targeting in,\r\nyour house shall know loud lamentations,\r\nmen and women wandering eyeless from tears,\r\ndistant curses will come up close.\r\nCities grieving their unburied boys\r\nwill bend in ill will at your policies,\r\npushing the sink of the dead into beautiful Thebes,\r\neven as high as your palace. These are my words,\r\nKreon, free of charge. Now you have heard.\r\n[Throws money at KREON.]\r\nCome, boy. We have seen enough.\r\n\r\n<strong>SOLDIER. <\/strong>\r\nThese words work in my heart, make me cough\r\nlike a plague unleashed. Tiresias is gone,\r\nbut his bitter knowledge lingers in the air.\r\nOld as I am, I can't remember him lying ever.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nAh. It is hurts to even think whether....\r\nBut I cannot remember him ever lying either.\r\nDamn it!\r\n\r\n<strong>SOLDIER. <\/strong>\r\nIf I may advise....\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nIf not always very wise,\r\nyou at least have served me. How could I woo\r\nthat troublesome Tiresias and ignore you?\r\n\r\n<strong>SOLDIER. <\/strong>\r\nThank you. I am worried. I think....\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nYes? What is it? Speak.\r\n\r\n<strong>SOLDIER. <\/strong>\r\nGet Antigone out of her tomb,\r\nand put Polynices in there. Trade 'em.\r\nMaybe the gods will take the hoodwink.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nFriend, of all my campaigns, I think,\r\nwould you really have me do this?\r\n\r\n<strong>SOLDIER. <\/strong>\r\nAs old as I am, I'd hate to see\r\nnew sorrow bring my old captain down.\r\nNow go at once. You heard how swift\r\nit must be done! The gods are never slow\r\nto punish men who wrong 'em. No.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nAll my heart's against it, all.\r\nBut, yes, all right. I'll\r\nnot wrestle destiny for a corpse.\r\n\r\n<strong>SOLDIER. <\/strong>\r\nAnd go yourself,\r\nthat's the right way with these things!\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nI will go. Servents-- fetch axes,\r\npull shovels from the farmers' hands.\r\nTo Polynices first, he's the first thing\r\nI'll take out of the gods' sight and put right.\r\nQuick, quick! The gods are stonger than us\r\nand all our little hubris of polity;\r\na man must serve them till he die.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<h2>SCENE TWELVE<\/h2>\n<pre>\r\n[OEDIPUS in Thebes, answering Sphinx.]\r\n\r\n<strong>OEDIPUS. <\/strong>\r\nIt's a hard day full of light\r\nas opposite a cramped, paranoic night\r\nas a traveller'd dare to care to have, or get,\r\nuntil it seems that that old soul the sun, cart-\r\nwheels just for fun, rolling toward oblivion.\r\nThe road's all dust, and a plague, they say,\r\nkills a city, Thebes, just one cross ridge away.\r\nThere the Sphinx, flinty singer, stone muse of mystery,\r\nriddles every passerby to intermit the plague\r\nbut none who've answered lived, or answered as a sage.\r\nBut as I was born a wanderer with swell\r\nfeet, I might as well\r\nattempt what answer I can make, or makeup what I can't,\r\n--for what use is life without a little of romance?\r\nLife's philosophy's eternal whim;\r\ntoo much permanence must make us grim,\r\nseize our sighs to breathless glaciers\r\nand put our passions on permanant vacations.\r\nI'll try my maybe answers to get the golden pouches\r\nproffered by the populace. There she crouches....\r\nNow let me take a chance; she's overheard!\r\nTime to make my stand. Sphinx! Lion! Woman! Bird!\r\n\r\n<strong>SPHINX. <\/strong>\r\nI am SPHINX. Take counsel, and be afraid.\r\n\r\n<strong>OEDIPUS. <\/strong>\r\nBe afraid? And drill myself to silence?\r\nI'd rather be an inquisitor in your presence.\r\n\r\n<strong>SPHINX. <\/strong>\r\nTime mocks men that mock their fears.\r\n\r\n<strong>OEDIPUS. <\/strong>\r\nI came to ask you what your riddle is,\r\nto delve it out or die.\r\n\r\n<strong>SPHINX. <\/strong>\r\n                 I am <strong>SPHINX. <\/strong>\r\n\r\nTake counsel, and depart.\r\n\r\n<strong>OEDIPUS. <\/strong>\r\n[Aside.]         A jinx.\r\nTake counsel and depart? Where, sorcerer,\r\nwould I go, a homeless wanderer? [Aloud.]\r\nI am ready for your riddle, Sphinx.\r\nI'm after this city of Thebes' rink-\r\ny-dink reward. There's advantage for my risk---\r\nenough to allay my fears, maybe, sans mock's 'tisk.'\r\n\r\n<strong>SPHINX. <\/strong>\r\nPrepare for death, mortal man.\r\n\r\n<strong>OEDIPUS. <\/strong>\r\nLay it on me, sister.\r\n\r\n<strong>SPHINX. <\/strong>\r\n             Answer, if you can:\r\nWhat walks on four legs at dawn, two at noon,\r\nand three legs when the sun is gone?\r\n\r\n<strong>OEDIPUS. <\/strong>\r\nBeats me. I give up, what is it?\r\n\r\n<strong>SPHINX. <\/strong>\r\nYour life and soul are forfeit.\r\n\r\n<strong>OEDIPUS. <\/strong>\r\nHey, I was just kidding! Man!\r\n\r\n<strong>SPHINX. <\/strong>\r\nMan? Make your answer clear, or soon....\r\n\r\n<strong>OEDIPUS. <\/strong>\r\nYeah, yeah... Man, that's it. Dawn\r\nis infancy, crawling on all fours; noon\r\nis adulthood, when we walk upright, and....\r\n\r\n<strong>SPHINX. <\/strong>\r\nI have seen the mighty of all nations\r\nlook appalled upon the pit, and die at these equations.\r\n\r\n<strong>OEDIPUS. <\/strong>\r\nAnd evening... evening is, well, uh, would be,\r\nthat is, or would be, would kinda haveta be,\r\nwell, you know, old age and all that. See?\r\n\r\n<strong>SPHINX. <\/strong>\r\nAn old age you will never know. Prepare!\r\n\r\n<strong>OEDIPUS. <\/strong>\r\nIn old age man walks on three... three...\r\n[Aside.] Stick to it, <strong>OEDIPUS. <\/strong>\r\nStick to it, stick, stick....\r\n\r\n<strong>SPHINX. <\/strong>\r\nStick? Your answer now, be quick!\r\n\r\n<strong>OEDIPUS. <\/strong>\r\nYes! Evening is old age, when man\r\nwalks with the aid of a crutch, a stick, when he can,\r\nyou know the deal. Well, monster, that's my guess;\r\nam I dead, or delivered from this mess?\r\n\r\n<strong>SPHINX. <\/strong>\r\nLive.\r\n\r\n<strong>OEDIPUS. <\/strong>\r\nNow to see what the Thebans will give.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<h2>SCENE THIRTEEN<\/h2>\n<pre>\r\n\r\n[Inside ANTIGONE's tomb.]\r\n\r\n<strong>ANTIGONE. <\/strong>\r\nAlready I am done with waiting.\r\nAlready I wish to be my consummation taking,\r\nand with these waters and flowers sweet\r\nend my too many days in this rock of night.\r\nNever again will the sun come unto my face\r\nunless it be in chinky disfigurence,\r\nrough oblongs that obscure what they set upon\r\nas much as may illuminate. This bride-bedecked tomb\r\ndiffers less than many might have thought\r\nfrom the airy daylight world I left,\r\nfilled, as that world is, with sights obscured\r\nby ambition and prideful puffings of the self\r\nenough to make this dismal chambered\r\ndark, bright as the broadest noonday to myself.\r\nBut already am I done with its smalls charms,\r\nand though it make me a respite from harm,\r\nand all the corrupting rack of earth outside\r\nthat seems a more populated dark of brutal tides,\r\nI am done. You have directed my feet, O gods,\r\nto this place, accept me to the afterworld\r\nas in this harried round of menace and ambition\r\nyou disgraced my simplicity and devotion.\r\nI am done. Now I'll tear my veil\r\nand shread my neck from breath as well\r\nwho should pant upon her bridal bed\r\nlike a wild leopard left unfed,\r\nsaying \"Haemon,\" and \"love\" and such smallnesses\r\nas this, which new-marrieds will make to pass\r\ntheir days in restful glory and in bliss.\r\n[She hangs herself.]\r\n\r\n<strong>HAEMON. <\/strong>\r\n[Outside.] This is the most desperate spot\r\nThebes or the entire earth has got,\r\nwhich everywhere else has such unequalled good;\r\nThis ruined landscape, flat, devoid,\r\nmeasures well with the harsh expectations\r\nof my empty soul. You, and you, drop your rations,\r\nand tear with me at these false-risen\r\nobstructions obscuring my life's business,\r\nthese stones of earth that cage my heart.\r\nMy father is the supreme head of State\r\nas well you fingers of his power know\r\nwhom he posted here. Now, let's go!\r\nWould you deny me, men? Think on it:\r\nwould you deny his son and risk the worst?\r\nGood. Now, to it! O State that makes such men\r\nso concerned with their skins and not what's within.\r\nAntigone! Since I cannot from\r\nthe blasted blankness of this rocky womb\r\ndeliver you to life and light again,\r\nwhich life lacks light without your presence,\r\nI've come to bury myself with you\r\nwhere my heart already lies entombed.\r\nThere, it is done. When I am within\r\nthis inky place, seal all up again the same\r\nand I shall thank you as though you were my saviors.\r\nAntigone.... do you sleep, or in prayer labor?\r\nMy adjusting eyes are hard put\r\nto see you or anything in this murk.\r\nHere's a cup of brackish water, a cruelty condoned\r\nby my father to hurt your last days alone.\r\nWhat's this? Soft... flowers strewn\r\nalmost to heaping! I thought is was yourself, Antigone,\r\nnothing else. Now the chamber's darkness dies\r\nand starts to glow like lurid moonrise\r\nover sandy wastes; things appear,\r\nbut not in their true character,\r\nbut merely, as it were,\r\nhalf-aware of what they were in daylight.\r\nI seem to see within my eye, and not without.\r\nWhat in the very center of this chamber floats?\r\n....A ghost! [Florishes sword at Antigone.]\r\nO spirit restless\r\nwhose place I trespass,\r\ngreet me as a younger brother born\r\nto share an immortality like your own.\r\nBut wait... Oh, I am done with waiting!  [Slashes.]\r\nCollapsing on the stone floor? What? A weighted thing....\r\n[Discards sword.] Now I own again my full sight\r\nto look upon the desecration of my heart.\r\nO Antigone! Were you so impaitient to be hurled\r\nfrom this sinister fascination called the world?\r\n\r\n[ENTER MESSENGER.]\r\n\r\n<strong>MESSENGER. <\/strong>\r\nGuards, stop your lawful punishment.\r\n\r\n<strong>SENTRY. <\/strong>\r\nThis is a trick. We're ordered to finish it.\r\n\r\n<strong>MESSENGER. <\/strong>\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nHe's changed his mind.\r\nHe spoke to Tiresias, and decided,\r\nbetter to gamble with the gods than against.\r\nThe state is not the only arbiter of mens' estate;\r\nhe grasped some greatness within that helped him\r\ndo one thing great. He rushed off then,\r\nspade in hand, to bury Polynices' properly.\r\nI had helped, starting out over there with 'em.\r\nWe had to... to.... It was awful...\r\nThen he thought it best to post me onward,\r\nhere to the tomb, to bring tidings to Haemon\r\nand ease his troubled mind. Haemon!\r\n\r\n<strong>SENTRY. <\/strong>\r\nYou'll have to shout considerably louder.\r\n\r\n<strong>MESSENGER. <\/strong>\r\nWhy? What evil is in your laughter?\r\n\r\n<strong>SENTRY. <\/strong>\r\nHaemon's in the tomb with Antigone.\r\n\r\n<strong>MESSENGER. <\/strong>\r\nIn there? Why? He was not condemned.\r\n\r\n<strong>SENTRY. <\/strong>\r\nHe wanted to be with his bride\r\nto break-in the bed.\r\n\r\n[A cry is heard from within the tomb..]\r\n\r\n<strong>MESSENGER. <\/strong>\r\nWhat's that? An evil sound of lunacy.\r\n\r\n<strong>SENTRY. <\/strong>\r\nLet's give the honeymoon couple some privacy.\r\n\r\n<strong>MESSENGER. <\/strong>\r\nBut Kreon orders them out!\r\n\r\n<strong>SENTRY. <\/strong>\r\nI'll await Kreon's orders. Don't pout.\r\nYou know what a hardhead he is.\r\n\r\n<strong>MESSENGER. <\/strong>\r\nHe sent me on ahead to tell you this.\r\n\r\n[Another cry.]\r\n\r\n<strong>SENTRY. <\/strong>\r\nHave you ever known Kreon's mind\r\nto ever change? The man's adamantine.\r\n\r\n<strong>MESSENGER. <\/strong>\r\nOut of my way then; I'll dig them out myself.\r\n\r\n<strong>SENTRY. <\/strong>\r\nNot while I have breath....\r\n\r\n[They prepare to scuffle. ENTER KREON.]\r\n\r\n<strong>MESSENGER. <\/strong>\r\nSire!\r\n\r\n<strong>SENTRY. <\/strong>\r\nThis man tried to break into the tomb\r\nand undo your orders, sir. You're under arrest. Come.\r\n\r\n[Another cry.]\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nWhat's that? From the tomb! Those cries!\r\n\r\n<strong>SENTRY. <\/strong>\r\nJust Haemon saying his goodbyes.\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nHaemon! Haemon! Are you in there?\r\nWhat is this crying out? Dear,\r\nson, speak to me-- I come here on my knees\r\nbegging forgiveness. Unloose me\r\nfrom this parental nightmare of regret.\r\nLet me see my son again obedient\r\nto a wronging father who corrects\r\nhimself by the forgotten love he recollects\r\n---I am as new-made as light\r\nwithin a sharpened diamond's made more bright\r\nby the outer hardness it discards\r\nto redouble illumination's shards\r\nand give back twice to the paitient eye\r\nall the glory looming in a summer sky.\r\nThere, through this hasty chink\r\nI see you in the center of the rock,\r\nlying athwart the darkest spot.\r\nBut beside you, what's that you've got?\r\nSomething white a little to your left;\r\nIt looks like Antigone's veil, bereft\r\nof her fine face and flung awry.\r\nI've buried Polynices, Antigone!\r\nWashed him up with my own hands,\r\nfirst with holy water with my own hands.\r\nAnd then into the mellow ground, you see,\r\nnow all the grime and dirt's on me.\r\nTiresias knocked sense into me, until I saw\r\nI've no war with the dead, except how\r\nto honor them more highly. Haemon!\r\nShall a father not be answered by his son?\r\n\r\n<strong>MESSENGER. <\/strong>\r\nWe're almost through, sire. Here's an entrance.\r\n\r\n<strong>SENTRY. <\/strong>\r\nWatch out, this heavy stone is losing its balance!\r\n\r\n<strong>KREON. <\/strong>\r\nHaemon-- voice of the damned dark, talk!--\r\nIs Antigone dead, did her body balk\r\nwhen I criminalized her love?\r\nTo my sunken ear her light voice dove,\r\ndeformed by aquatic harmonics, till\r\nI only heard her mumur against my will,\r\nmy will magnified by water into The State.\r\nI'll dash away these tears and wait\r\nto hear her voice again from under shale.\r\nShe has hung herself with her unwound vail!\r\nHaemon, Haemon, let my grief\r\nreverse engineer her death back to relief,\r\nand may my taut repentance\r\nrekinkle our cold aquiantance,\r\nfor a father and son should be united;\r\nthen her death might be less blighted.\r\nO my son, let my sorrow, my tears, impart\r\nby my new-washed intent, a place in your heart!\r\nForgive me! All's done ill.\r\nHere, take my hand. No! This chill\r\nand evil fiction in your eyes!\r\nHaemon, the father in me dies\r\nto see you see me through such lies,\r\na vail of hating falsities.\r\nNor can I expect a blink's reprieve\r\nfrom the long stabs inside your sight\r\nthat show me as I am, not as I might\r\nhave been: a father loving and alive\r\nto all his only son might give.\r\nAh! now he's stabbing at my face,\r\nstabbing, stabbing at my disgrace,\r\nthe delineaments of age and error\r\nthat no longer awe him into terror\r\nnor any obedience any longer.\r\nSon, o son, I wish I had been stronger!\r\nand known the fictions of renown\r\nmake their victors victims of their poem.\r\nNow... No! No! Haemon, slice\r\nnothing of yourself for your father's vice!\r\nTurn the wild knife's erratic\r\nattention back against the vatic\r\nidiot who forgot his only duty\r\nwas to tell his son to love his beauty,\r\nand let young Haemon, and pretty Antigone,\r\nlive and love and be.\r\nCome out and kill the wretch\r\nwho held a burecratic pen to sketch\r\na tyrant's tragedy among the stars,\r\nand cut his heart to a hash of scars.\r\nCome out and kill me. Oh fair boy,\r\nwhose rose of blood lays unalloyed\r\non Antigone's dead and paper cheek....\r\nYou have won your bride, even as I speak,\r\nand I have lost my son.\r\n\r\n[The stone is rolled away. We see\r\nHAEMON and ANTIGONE dead.]\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<h2><strong>End<\/strong><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A rhyming adaptation of Sophocles&#8217; &#8216;Antigone&#8217; Antigone stood up like a periscope, discerning truth, descrying hope; She was battered, borne along by Time&#8217;s monumental stream of wrong until into truth&#8217;s white crucible she sullenly withdrew. their minds on matters of philosophy. Yet, for all this, Elric&#8217;s thoughts were forever turning to Zarozina and the fear <a href='https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/posts\/antirime\/' 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":[1740,1762],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-plays","category-antirime","category-1740-id","category-1762-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6186","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=6186"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7288,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6186\/revisions\/7288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}