Vernon Watkins
Phaedra
Absence divided us.
Now it is meeting
Tears us apart:
O heart, stop beating.
I have a right to anger.
I was preceded.
The bridebed I shared
Had served another.
She was the mother
Of my undoing.
Without her Hippolytus
Had not been seeded.
Theseus took her
To bed when younger.
Had their embraces
Raised a girl,
I had been spared
This present ruin:
The thread of perdition
Had not been spun.
My lord, my guest,
At your suspicion
He has confessed
The breakers over us.
He has not come.
It is the wall
Draws with vermilions
The charging bull.
Why must the stallions
Kick their traces?
I and his son
Undone before him.
Hippolytus: what made
These eyes adore him?
She is the guilty one,
She who bore him.
Theseus the Shade,
Dead, yet living,
Strength coupled
With pitiless anger.
So long in mortal danger,
Then, one day,
Killing the Minotaur,
While I forgot him.
Where is my refuge
From the unforgiving?
Had she not known him
I had not been troubled.
Where is Hippolytus?
Had I obeyed,
My guilt had spoken;
The son had stayed.
How shall I gainsay
His noble lying,
Looking on Hades?
Thunders begot him.
The Minotaur’s shadow
Travels the wall.
Sea-wrack and refuse
On us shall fall.
I hear him coming.
His footfall stays.
What way but dying
Out of this maze?
Page(s) 8-10
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