The ladies in red capes and golden bracelets
Walk like reeds and talk like rivers,
And sigh, like Vichy water, in the doorways;
And looks run down the land like colts,
Race with the wind, (the mares, their mothers’, lover)
Down to the empty harbor.
All spine and sandal stand the willow women;
They shake their silver bangles
In the olive-light of clouds and windows,
Talking, among themselves, like violins;
And, opening their eyes wide as horizons,
Seem to await the navy home from Troy.
No longer stand together, widow women!
Give your gold ornaments to the poor,
Make run the waterspeech of beads between your fingers:
For Troy is burned, and Greece is cursed,
The plague comes like a cloud.
All your men are sleeping in the alien earth,
But one.
And Clytemnestra, walking like a willow, stares.
Beads and bracelets gently knifeclash all about her,
Because the conqueror, the homecome hero,
The soldier, Agamemnon,
Bleeds in her conscience, twisting like a root.