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The Tower Beyond Tragedy

I
You'd never have thought the Queen was Helen's sister- Troy's
burning-flower from Sparta, the beautiful sea-flower
Cut in clear stone, crowned with the fragrant golden mane, she
the ageless, the uncontaminable-
This Clytemnestra was her sister, low-statured, fierce-lipped, not
dark nor blonde, greenish-gray-eyed,
Sinewed with strength, you saw, under the purple folds of the
queen-cloak, but craftier than queenly,
Standing between the gilded wooden porch-pillars, great steps of
stone above the steep street,
Awaiting the King.
Most of his men were quartered on the town;
he, clanking bronze, with fifty
And certain captives, came to the stair. The Queen's men were
a hundred in the street and a hundred
Lining the ramp, eighty on the great flags of the porch; she
raising her white arms the spear-butts
Thundered on the stone, and the shields clashed; eight shining
clarions

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poem by Robinson Jeffers
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Cassandra

Down in the street theyre all singing and shouting
Staying alive though the city is dead
Hiding their shame behind hollow laughter
While you are crying alone on your bed
Pity cassandra that no one believed you
But then again you were lost from the start
Now we must suffer and sell our secrets
Bargain, playing smart, aching in our hearts
Sorry cassandra I misunderstood
Now the last day is dawning
Some of us wanted but none of us could
Listen to words of warning
But on the darkest of nights
Nobody knew how to fight
And we were caught in our sleep
Sorry cassandra I didnt believe
You really had the power
I only saw it as dreams you would weave
Until the final hour
So in the morning your ship will be sailing

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song performed by ABBA
Added by Lucian Velea
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Cymon And Iphigenia. From Boccace

Old as I am, for lady's love unfit,
The power of beauty I remember yet,
Which once inflamed my soul, and still inspires my wit.
If love be folly, the severe divine;
Has felt that folly, though he censures mine;
Pollutes the pleasures of a chaste embrace,
Acts what I write, and propagates in grace,
With riotous excess, a priestly race.
Suppose him free, and that I forge the offence,
He showed the way, perverting first my sense:
In malice witty, and with venom fraught,
He makes me speak the things I never thought.
Compute the gains of his ungoverned zeal;
Ill suits his cloth the praise of railing well.
The world will think that what we loosely write,
Though now arraigned, he read with some delight;
Because he seems to chew the end again,
When his broad comment makes the text too plain,
And teaches more in one explaining page
Than all the double meanings of the stage.

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poem by John Dryden
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The Aeneid of Virgil: Book 2

ALL were attentive to the godlike man,
When from his lofty couch he thus began:
“Great queen, what you command me to relate
Renews the sad remembrance of our fate:
An empire from its old foundations rent, 5
And ev’ry woe the Trojans underwent;
A peopled city made a desart place;
All that I saw, and part of which I was:
Not ev’n the hardest of our foes could hear,
Nor stern Ulysses tell without a tear. 10
And now the latter watch of wasting night,
And setting stars, to kindly rest invite;
But, since you take such int’rest in our woe,
And Troy’s disastrous end desire to know,
I will restrain my tears, and briefly tell 15
What in our last and fatal night befell.
“By destiny compell’d, and in despair,
The Greeks grew weary of the tedious war,
And by Minerva’s aid a fabric rear’d,
Which like a steed of monstrous height appear’d: 20

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poem by Publius Vergilius Maro
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Cassandra

The mad girl with the staring eyes and long white fingers
Hooked in the stones of the wall,
The storm-wrack hair and screeching mouth: does it matter, Cassandra,
Whether the people believe
Your bitter fountain? Truly men hate the truth, they'd liefer
Meet a tiger on the road.
Therefore the poets honey their truth with lying; but religion—
Vendors and political men
Pour from the barrel, new lies on the old, and are praised for kind
Wisdom. Poor bitch be wise.
No: you'll still mumble in a corner a crust of truth, to men
And gods disgusting—you and I, Cassandra.

poem by Robinson Jeffers
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My Realistic Sister

when she speaks
there will always be truth to it.

she told you
it wouldn't work
and it did not really work.

see? she is Cassandra.

see? the rails are cut off now
the train stops.

she speaks from the past lives she had.
once she was Cleopatra, she knew any Julius Caesar.

now she is telling me the same thing.
i am afraid, this thing too that i have in my palm

will not work. I am crushing it, but i still doubt it.
i wish it were a bird with strong bones.

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poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Cassandra

I

REND, rend thine hair, Cassandra: he will go.
Yea, rend thy garments, wring thine hands, and cry
From Troy still towered to the unreddened sky.
See, all but she that bore thee mock thy woe:—
He most whom that fair woman arms, with show
Of wrath on her bent brows; for in this place
This hour thou bad'st all men in Helen's face
The ravished ravishing prize of Death to know.
What eyes, what ears hath sweet Andromache,
Save for her Hector's form and step; as tear
On tear make salt the warm last kiss he gave?
He goes. Cassandra's words beat heavily
Like crows above his crest, and at his ear
Ring hollow in the shield that shall not save.

II

“O HECTOR, gone, gone, gone! O Hector, thee

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poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Incomplete

Incomplete

Ashlar: If a miss was as good as a mile
Surely I'd be lost in the Nile
Because here I am living in denial
Depths so deep I'd swear I lie below a pile
This file and those burdens are all but a history that hides my smile

Cassandra: If you took time to turn you would see what you miss
For a clear sky and a little rain bring a rainbow of bliss.
Only problem is that you are busy living in a rainy day's bloomer.
You never took a moment to try, held back by words of fear whispered in a hiss
If life was a fairytale I would say you are looking for peace, a spell broken only by true love's kiss
But in the clock's last tick, you took a moment for that to dismiss

Ashlar: I never thought I'd be here because to me it's just another a modern day misconception
But if this is everyone's reality, where is my ideality? ?
On the outside I'm a king looking for a queen because concubines failed to satisfy
An empty vessel on the inside, yearning for repletion.
How my eyes long to gaze upon the adornment of true beauty for it may return my joviality

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poem by Sir T.A.E.P.S
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Cassandra's Blues

Prescience was the fatal curse
That drove her future in a Hearse
Towards the walls of fatal dice
Where Achaeans bid so well to smite
Their wooden vessel that encodes
The Sun Gods laughter on his thrown
Vengeance for her first refusal
Comforts from his lecherous council

While hazard poured outside her tongue
Hiccupped through riddles of vapors lost
Her relatives could not profess
It's semblance for common sense
Whereas ten thousand stood outside
She wailed besieged to the endgames tide
Perhaps they should have played charades
Then they wouldn't have been a myth one day

Cassandra's Blues were born from the truth

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poem by Kevin Patrick
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Cassandra: Pah! the house fumes with stench and spilth of blood.
Chorus: How? 'tis the smell of household offerings.

lines from Agamemnon by Aeschylus, translated by E.D.A. Morshead
Added by Dan Costinaş
Comment! | Vote! | Copy! | In Romanian