I came into the world with timbrels and with dances,
With timbrels and with dances.
I saw rainbows and heard larks singing,
I smelled meadows and tasted snowflakes falling on my tongue.
I did not know then that my father had traded me for a victory,
That in my youth I would be laid on a bed of twigs atop the altar,
My throat slit like a lamb’s,
And burnt as an offering to a god who cared nothing for offerings.
I was granted two months in the mountains before my immolation,
For two months I wailed and with my eyes drank in the peaks,
Now blue-white, now coppery,
I watched the scree fall like sand in a glass,
I watched invisible wind sweep snow into clouds.

I did not know that I was Iphigenia at Aulis,
And my father had traded me for fair winds for his fleet.
His war vessels sheltered in port, his armies restive.
North of the Euxine Sea he set me on the altar,
Burnt me up to appease Artemis of the contrary winds.

For nearly a century I have been in Pascal’s room.
Everyday for nine decades the executioner has dragged someone by the hair
To the killing ground.
He has taken my parents and siblings,
Even my grandson.
The executioner has taken villains and saints,
The strong and the feeble,
The heroes and the whiners,
He has dragged them all by the hair
While we looked on.
But not me, I who have forgotten my name and native tongue.

For the room is empty and silent.
I pray the Master while by chance passing the window
Will see me through the grill and shout:
“Release her immediately and bring her to me!”

The dread executioner himself in his leather hood lies dead,
The jailers have died in their sleep,
The cooks and bakers breathed their last in their beds before dawn
And the ovens grow cold.
Has the Master, or his heirs, departed?
Are they feasting tonight in a château,
And does the clanking of their hounds’ chains remind them of something?

November 13th, 2006