Kassandra I

Are you angry because you don't understand me?
I insult you, because you don't understand me?
Divinely inspired is my prophetic madness,
    I'm filled with it,
but I control myself and speak plainly.

Towers that you built to woo the gods
have fallen down.
Who're you wooing now? Helen's no longer handsome.
To own female beauty, you dreamt a form for marble,
you gave stone an opaque complexion, a virgin breast,
but the eyes for ever empty repulsed you.
Whatever you achieved, you gained only emptiness.

And now, when Orpheus too is dead, thrown to animals,
head for monkeys, sex for dogs to share,
and Greek's only fit for birds,
the beasts appear,
Knowing    sensing
from damp warm woods
for which he gave peace, with the music of his mind,

beasts that have broken loose from the lyre's reins
sneak like spirits into your chambers,
cry for glowing dreams on perfumed beds, in milk baths,
in the atrium, by the fountain or the book, by cool and
                                               lovely style
claiming an empire. Aren't you afraid?