Through Me is the way into the doleful city;
Through Me is the way into eternal pain;
Through Me the way among the people lost.
Justice moved my High Maker;
Divine Power moved Me, Wisdom Supreme and Primal Love.
Before Me were no things created, but eternal;
And eternal I endure: Leave all hope, ye that enter.
All of us are just images and empty shade.
Just when you think all is straight and constant,
A fork is made, and the road becomes two;
"Where do I go, which way do I turn?"
The decisions come and go,
But it is always the same --
Good and evil, right and left, this world or that --
The bells toll and the sun passes over the mountain;
"Which way do I turn?"
But there is no proof for that road. Why take it?
Where can it possibly lead that we have not already been?
There is always a single road -- material reality.
But, I tell you, this choice is real;
It is life, gone, like fleeting sand blown through the fingers,
Slipping steadily away, until --
Nothing thus remains.
"Hurry now, there isn't much time,
Which way do I turn?"
Shadowless bodies cast no shade.
Evil comes from Night, daughter of Chaos,
The Original emptiness.
Stories of evil told by Muses, singing and dancing,
Ones that tell truth of lies;
Stories of those caught in the balance
Between the fingers of Fate,
Cutting the golden thread;
We know what we hear, but believe only what we see.
Terpsikhore, tell us of where winter falls again on earth,
And Persephone returns to the underworld:
Demeter, wrought with sorrow,
Sees the land as it withers away -- nothing but dust;
Trees shrug, flowers bow at death,
The winter sun blanches all.
"But poor Demeter, it is your people, your land,
That now suffers."
"It no longer matters to me
I care not, for my beloved,
I am without."
Your apathy takes its toll on earth,
And your dying heart;
Even a mountain of love crumbles.
Fair-voiced Calliope brings us to a story of jealousy,
Of a question unanswerable, impossible;
"Three goddesses, we are told:
The wife of power, beautiful and pure,
But a streak of green so deep it runs through her veins;
Daughter, bourn fully of the mind of the highest father,
Wise and wishing only for honor;
And the third, in a mix of blood and water,
Bourn of the father's suffering,
Envy of all."
A wedding -- an apple thrown, kallistêi
But who can choose so bold a title
Without any of the least offense?
O Innocent passerby -- Paris, forced to choose
Between three, for which no answer yields good;
Influenced by the cold repose of Aphrodite,
Becomes the object of jealous rage.
By sheer misfortune, a cold war; the land of Troy will fall.
Merely self-infliction, Thalia brings news of Tantalos:
"Why, dear man, play games with those of power?"
Friend to gods, man loved by all
Shared the wonders of the immortal world,
The sacred indulgence of nectar and ambrosia.
Darkness clouds thought, in a fit of pleasure,
Steals of the sustaining life;
Those of ikhor do not bleed.
"You fool, you cannot reach the fruits,
For they escape beyond your mortal grasp."
Forever hunger and thirst for life, tantalized,
Forever punished for selfish satisfaction;
Even the water recedes to quickly to drown away.
Suffering will never end.
O Polymnia, tell us of the god of man,
Who loves his creation, but despised of by all Olympus:
Prometheus, god of wisdom and knowledge,
Inventor by craft -- trickster by sport.
"See what your trickery has done?
Man has much now, but what have you?"
Nothing, but the suffering inflicted by selfish gods.
On a desolate mountain, bound to cold stone,
The eagle comes, are your back:
In a cold blast, the rattle of bones.
Erato, of love and beauty, what of Echo?
Punished for her excessive lies, Hera bid her only the final words
And given a fierce lust for the handsome Narcissus.
"Echo, do you hear? Do you hear?
He cannot love you, for he lusts only for himself."
She withers away, but her punished voice remains:
She rings in deep caverns,
Avalanches of snow still respond
Liker her voice, cold, lonely, emotionless --
Calling only to the flower on the banks in Spring,
Gone again by winter, in the bleak silence,
Here, her mourning is heard best.
Please come back, come back!
The story of the hero Achilles is all too well-known,
But here a story of destruction, Euterpe tells:
Raised by the good centaur Cheron,
Achilles grew to be a great warrior
Bred on fearlessness, only to thirst for dominance.
Brought to anger the leader Agamemnon,
Stealer of Briseis, prized servant and friend,
Achilles lets his anger, quick to rise, full of wrath.
Refusing to fight in anger of the leader's wrong,
His friends fall to enemies on his behalf,
His own soon to come at the strike of a heel;
Anger can only lead to death.
Wrath only covers the light shed on truth.
Do not fear Ourania, tell us of your realm
And what comes of a high spirit:
Trapped in a winding maze,
Only a candle to possession,
The inventor plans his escape.
"I give you these wings, my son, to fly;
To escape the twists and turns of Fate,"
He tells his son, and in time, the plans complete.
Warned by a father's cautious love,
Icarus lets only pride in his way;
"I feel like a god" flying higher and higher;
But O, Icarus, if only you knew
What would come of your prideful nature.
"Why this mournful gloom,
For that celestial light?"
"It is better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven!"
Falling from the heat of the fiery sun
Only icy water of the sea,
Burned and melted away.
What was there in the end? Ash.
You! Who are like white-washed tombs,
Handome on the outside, but inside
Are full of dead men's bones.
Awake, arise, or be forever fallen!
O Kind Watchmaker
Who sees this 'watch?'
It goes: tick-tock, tick-tock --
Bang
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