Robert Fagles - Agamemnon (lines 1088 - 1141) lyrics

CASSANDRA: No ... the house that hates god, an echoing womb of guilt, kinsmen torturing kinsmen, severed heads, slaughterhouse of heroes, soil streaming blood - Leader: A keen hound, this stranger. Trailing murder, and murder she will find. CASSANDRA: See, my witnesses - I trust to them, to the babies wailing, skewered on the sword, their flesh charred, the father gorging on their parts - Leader: We'd heard your fame as a seer, but no one looks for seers in Argos. CASSANDRA: Oh no, what horror, what new plot, new agony this? - it's growing, ma**ing, deep in the house, a plot, a monstrous - thing to crush the loved ones, no, there is no cure, and rescue's far away and - Leader: I can't read these signs; I knew the first, the city rings with them. CASSANDRA: You, you godforsaken - you'd do this The lord of your bed, you bathe him... his body glistens, then - how to tell the climax? - comes so quickly, see, hand over hand shoots out, hauling ropes - then lunge! Leader: Still lost. Her riddles, her dark words of god - I'm groping, helpless. CASSANDRA: No no, look there! - what's that? some net flung out of hell - No, she is the snare, the bedmate, d**hmate, murder's strong right arm! Let the insatiate discord in the race rear up and shriek 'Avenge the victim - stone them dead!' Leader: What Fury is this? Why rouse it, lift its wailing through the house? I hear you and lose hope. Chorus: Drop by drop at the heart, the gold of life ebbs out. We are the old soldiers... wounds will come with the crushing sunset of our lives. d**h is close, and quick. CASSANDRA: Lookout! - look out! Ai, drag the great bull from the mate! - a thrash of robes, she traps him -writhing - she gores him through ! And now he buckles, look, the bath swirls red There's stealth and murder in the cauldron, do you hear? Leader: I'm no judge, I've little sk** with the oracles, but even I know danger when I hear it Chorus: What good are the oracles to men? Words, more words, and the hurt comes on us, endless words and a seer's techniques have brought us terror and the truth. CASSANDRA: The agony - O I am breaking! - Fate's so hard, and the pain that floods my voice is mine alone. Why have you brought me here, tormented as I am? Why, unless to die with him, why else?