CHORUS:
The great curse of the house, the spirit,
dead weight wrath - and you can praise it! 1510
Praise the insatiate doom that feeds
relentless on our future and our sons.
Oh all through the will of Zeus,
the cause of all, the one who works it all.
What comes to birth that is not Zeus? 1515
Our lives are pain, what part not come from god?
Oh my king, my captain,
how to salute you, how to mourn you?
What can I say with all my warmth and love?
Here in the black widow's web you lie, 1520
gasping out your life
in a sacrilegious d**h, dear god,
reduced to a slave's bed,
my king of men, yoked by stealth and Fate,
by the wife's hand that thrust the two-edged sword. 1525
CLYTAEMNESTRA:
You claim the work is mine, call me
Agamemnon's wife - you are so wrong.
Fleshed in the wife of this dead man,
the spirit lives within me,
our savage ancient spirit of revenge. 1530
In return for Atreus' brutal feast
he k**s his perfect son - for every
murdered child, a crowning sacrifice.
CHORUS:
And you, innocent of his murder?
And who could swear to that? and how?... 1535
and still an avenger could arise,
bred by fathers' crimes, and lend a hand.
He wades in the blood of brothers,
stream on the mounting stream - black war erupts
and where he strides revenge will stride, 1540
clots will ma** for the young who were devoured.
Oh my king, my captain,
how to salute you, how to mourn you?
What can I say with all my warmth and love?
Here in the black widow's web you lie, 1545
gasping out your life
in a sacrilegious d**h, dear god,
reduced to a slave's bed,
my king of men, yoked by stealth and Fate,
by the wife's hand that thrust the two-edged sword. 1550
CLYTEMNAESTRA:
No slave's d**h, I think-
no stealthier than the d**h he dealt
our house and the offspring of our loins,
Iphigeneia, girl of tears.
Act for act, wound for wound! 1555
Never exult Hades, swordsman,
here you are repaid. By the sword
you did your work and by the sword you die.