Part 26 (2/2)

Absolute loneliness. Nothing there except The beat of the waves and the beat of my raw wound ...

This island is a nowhere. n.o.body Would ever put in here. There's nothing.

Nothing to attract a lookout's eye.

n.o.body in his right mind would come near it.

And the rare ones that ever did turn up Landed by accident, against their will.

They would take pity on me, naturally.

Share out their supplies and give me clothes.

But not a one of them would ever, ever Take me on board with them to s.h.i.+p me home.

Every day has been a weeping wound For ten years now. Ten years of misery That's all my service ever got for me.

That's what I've got to thank Odysseus for And Menelaus and Agamemnon.

G.o.ds curse them all!

I ask for the retribution I deserve.

III.

PHILOCTETES.

Have you not a sword for me? Or an axe? Or something?

CHORUS.

What for?

PHILOCTETES.

What for? What do you think for?

For foot and head and hand. For the relief Of cutting myself off. I want away.

CHORUS.

Away where?

PHILOCTETES.

Away to the house of death.

To my father, sitting waiting Under the clay roof. I'll come back in to him Out of the light, out of his memory Of the day I left.

We'll be on the riverbank Again, and see the Greeks arriving And me setting out for Troy, in all good faith.

IV.

CHORUS.

Human beings suffer.

They torture one another.

They get hurt and get hard.

No poem or play or song Can fully right a wrong Inflicted and endured.

History says, Don't hope On this side of the grave, But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change On the far side of revenge.

Believe that a farther sh.o.r.e Is reachable from here.

Believe in miracles And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing, The utter self-revealing Double-take of feeling.

If there's fire on the mountain And lightning and storm And a G.o.d speaks from the sky That means someone is hearing The outcry and the birth-cry Of new life at its term.

It means once in a lifetime That justice can rise up And hope and history rhyme.

PHILOCTETES.

Hercules: I saw him in the fire.

Hercules was s.h.i.+ning in the air.

I heard the voice of Hercules in my head.

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