Cassandra If she is gold then I am silver, if she is water drunk to quench an abiding thirst, then I am air expelled after a heated quarrel; if she launches ten-thousand ships then I spurn the sun-god and buy his wrath; no one believes anything I say, yet I see all; everyone is blinded by her beauty and deaf to my truths; she brings shame to my father, death to my brother – that horse will shit men and my home and country will burn tomorrow because of her and still, I will be remembered for my failings.
So, yet another day, yet another girl, another American sonnet -- I was having
a particularly hard time getting my daughter(s) to listen this morning and
it made me think of Cassandra....
whew…
there’s a lot of pent-up heat in this poem…and yet the threat of its arrival is there, too…I love the “air/expelled after the heat of a quarrel”
that image of the Trojan horse shitting men…what a way to envision their predestined doom…wow