The Complaint of Prometheus

Aeschylus

O holy Aether, and swift-winged Winds,

And River-wells, and laughter innumerous

Of yon Sea-waves! Earth, mother of us all,

And all-viewing cyclic Sun, I cry on you,–

Behold me a god, what I endure from gods!

Behold, with throe on throe,

How, wasted by this woe,

I wrestle down the myriad years of Time!

Behold, how fast around me

The new King of the happy ones sublime

Has flung the chain he forged, has shamed and bound me!

Woe, woe! to-day’s woe and the coming morrow’s

I cover with one groan. And where is found me

A limit to these sorrows?

And yet what word do I say? I have foreknown

Clearly all things that should be; nothing done

Comes sudden to my soul–and I must bear

What is ordained with patience, being aware

Necessity doth front the universe

With an invincible gesture. Yet this curse

Which strikes me now, I find it hard to brave

In silence or in speech. Because I gave

Honour to mortals, I have yoked my soul

To this compelling fate. Because I stole

The secret fount of fire, whose bubbles went

Over the ferrule’s brim, and manward sent

Art’s mighty means and perfect rudiment,

That sin I expiate in this agony,

Hung here in fetters, ‘neath the blanching sky.

Ah, ah me! what a sound,

What a fragrance sweeps up from a pinion unseen

Of a god, or a mortal, or nature between,

Sweeping up to this rock where the earth has her bound,

To have sight of my pangs, or some guerdon obtain–

Lo, a god in the anguish, a god in the chain!

The god Zeus hateth sore,

And his gods hate again,

As many as tread on his glorified floor,

Because I loved mortals too much evermore.

Alas me! what a murmur and motion I hear,

As of birds flying near!

And the air undersings

The light stroke of their wings–

And all life that approaches I wait for in fear.

I Was My Own Route

Julia de Burgos

I wanted to be like men wanted me to be:

an attempt at life;

a game of hide and seek with my being.

But I was made of nows,

and my feet level on the promissory earth

would not accept walking backwards

and went forward, forward,

mocking the ashes to reach the kiss

of new paths.

At each advancing step on my route forward

my back was ripped by the desperate flapping wings

of the old guard.

But the branch was unpinned forever,

and at each new whiplash my look

separated more and more and more from the distant

familiar horizons;

and my face took the expansion that came from within,

the defined expression that hinted at a feeling

of intimate liberation;

a feeling that surged

from the balance between my life

and the truth of the kiss of the new paths.

Already my course now set in the present,

I felt myself a blossom of all the soils of the earth,

of the soils without history,

of the soils without a future,

of the soil always soil without edges

of all the men and all the epochs.

And I was all in me as was life in me .. . .

I wanted to be like men wanted me to be:

an attempt at life;

a game of hide and seek with my being.

But I was made of nows;

when the heralds announced me

at the regal parade of the old guard,

the desire to follow men warped in me,

and the homage was left waiting for me.

Medusa

Carol Ann Duffy - from The World's Wife

A suspicion, a doubt, a jealousy grew in my mind, which turned the hairs on my head to filthy snakes, as though my thoughts hissed and spat on my scalp.

My bride’s breath soured, stank in the grey bags of my lungs. I’m foul mouthed now, foul tongued, yellow fanged. There are bullet tears in my eyes. Are you terrified?

Be terrified. It’s you I love, perfect man, Greek God, my own; but I know you’ll go, betray me, stray from home. So better by far for me if you were stone.

I glanced at a buzzing bee, a dull grey pebble fell to the ground. I glanced at a singing bird, a handful of dusty gravel spattered down.

I looked at a ginger cat, a housebrick shattered a bowl of milk. I looked at a snuffling pig, a boulder rolled in a heap of shit.

I stared in the mirror. Love gone bad showed me a Gorgon. I stared at a dragon. Fire spewed from the mouth of a mountain.

And here you come with a shield for a heart and a sword for a tongue and your girls, your girls. Wasn’t I beautiful? Wasn’t I fragrant and young?

Look at me now

Mum is Having a Baby!

Colin McNaughton - is outraged by a prospective sibling

Mum is having a baby!

I’m shocked! I’m all at sea!

What’s she want another one for:

WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH ME!?