One Prose Poem by Don Krieger

Cassandra, Daughter of Troy

  Forget what you've heard. We knew her.

—    The Witnesses  —

 

Hecuba

    I bore them, one after the next. I hardly knew them, even their names, but I know their killers.

Night after night, Cassandra's screams echoed through the walls into the town. When I held her, she slept, then woke and screamed till dawn; Helenus too, but together, they slept, clinging to each other's feet.

War came and my city lay open – so many sons killed, women taken, my husband, my children; I went mad. They say I blinded someone, killed his sons. They named me dog, but no greater beasts exist than princes. Though I lived only as crucible, I live yet in Elysium with my daughters, and there are no heroes here.

 

Hector

I was still young when they were born, twins, always together, whispering, hiding, full of mischief but somehow, never caught. One day, they were still tiny, they came to me hand in hand as I practiced the axe. Helenus was distracted by dragonflies. Cassandra looked up at me with calm, her eyes the same as our grandmother's, and as if I was a player in her child's game she said, Andromache will always have life.

 

Andromache

The day Troy fell, Pyrrhus snatched Hector's son from my arms, cast him from our tower, and so I withered to a wraith. The victors' lot cast me to this same Pyrrhus, my second husband, father of more sons. Helenus, my third, told me that Cassandra caused it all. What do I care? I only know I bore son after son to one prince after the next, and wove shrouds for them all.

 

Freedom

We held to each other, twins in the royal crèche, seeing, knowing, our innocence ripped away, shrieking, but our understanding still unstained. That changed and I knew that when Apollo asked, fate would turn on my answer for my city, for all the world, even for the gods. Either way, my lot was servitude and horror.

Once I chose, it hardly mattered that I was made mute, invisible, like an old woman. That after all was my fame, and power too, for it granted those brief moments to breathe free and speak ungodly truth: to my father, Beware the gift horse; to Agamemnon, Your queen breathes murder; to Apollo, No.

 

The Fulcrum of Fate

    Take me, Cassandra, else you will never be believed. – Apollo

That day we washed, girls in a sand pool near the river mouth, first our clothes, then each other. I lived that moment a thousand times. as an infant and as a child, when I chose for myself, for my sisters, and for Greece.

At first step into the water, the cold of it rippled through us and he was there, perfect but only his manly torso, for though the faces of Zeus's children are beautiful, Apollo is hideous for the cruel meanness which would compel a girl, and for his utter reliance on his gifts. No one has understood that, that I bore his curse because he lived as coward and failed as god.

 

Aiax

    We are creatures of war. Even the Hebrews know this.

At Troy's fall, my lust was sated as always before, with innocent blood. I plucked Cassandra from your embrace, feeble goddess, your arm ripped away by my might, and with it your pledge to Troy's safety. Why would I worship Athena, a goddess who could not kill me, when I am mightier than she.

But when my fellow kings seized me, my life in the balance, then I cried, I am innocent. Never before have I cowered. I would flush to the bone remembering, had I skin and blood. So many heroes dwell here in anguish, yet that wisp of a girl, that heroes' toy, lives on with the righteous.

 

Agamemnon

I knew Helen, of course, trouble from the start, Clytemnestra's sister and lovely as the sun, a constant temptation and my brother's wife. When she ran off, good riddance, but he was wild for her, and when we learned it was Trojans, then there was power in it and glory too.

When it came to spoils, I chose Cassandra, her unquenched fire like a force of nature, and I was glad I did. Before we reached home though, I should have given her away or killed her, for Clyté saw her and became too sweet. I should have seen it and I should have believed Cassandra, for that last night together, Clyté and her creature stabbed us, then hacked us to pieces for fools. Clyté's spite sent me to hell, King and Greatest of Greeks; Cassandra still lives in Elysium.

 

Helenus

    Cassandra chose our fate and I allowed it. Why not? My life was good.

We were children, clinging to each other, staring into the stark futures, axes and arrows, bronze blades and blood, the power of prescience raged in us like a furnace. War came for a decade, the Greeks' siege defeated again and again by Hector, by our wall, by their own madness and lust for glory. They hunted me down and yes, I told them. Why not? They said it was jealousy, that Helen chose another, but I knew it all from the start. I had seen Troy laid open a thousand times. I knew with the certainty of a god what would come, and just as surely that I would flourish. Yes I told them, deface Athena, kill Troilus, yet I did not betray, for the furies had long since decreed Troy's fall. We saw that as tender children, but my lot was contentment, Cassandra's was grief and rage.

 

Athena

    Never have I served a mortal unless I wished it, even Odysseus.

How cruel that a child saw so clearly and was forced to choose her own doom! I admire you, Cassandra, your courage and your judgment too, but your choice undid me. When Aiax defied me in my own house and the Greeks favoured his coward's plea, I, God of War and Wisdom, was forced to vengeance and so served your prescient will. That ended my power over men – how strange, that no one believed you, then or now, yet everyone knows the Gods are bested by knowledge.

 

Farewell

I am Cassandra, cursed princess of Troy. I had wealth and station, but like those before me and the multitude since, only through men who wanted me. Apollo was mine, the towering perfection of him, the glories of the god's mistress. I could not bear it, subject body and soul to a coward, even a god. Had I taken him, Troy lives an extra month, I have a daughter, and Agamemnon takes her. No! I chose instead to deny both beasts and bear the curse, to live mute with my lucid vision, my wit and freedom transmuted to a weapon, wielded to shield the unborn.

Tell my story to all who will listen. Though straight from me, you can only write as has always been for us, through a glass darkly. For we still have power only through men. That battle goes on, and though my sight remains, this time, the choice of fate is not mine. I only know our power grows, and so too man's cowardice.

Don Krieger is a biomedical researcher whose focus is the electric activity within the brain. He is author of the 2020 hybrid collection, "Discovery" (Cyberwit), the 2022 hybrid chapbook, "When Danger Is Past, Who Remembers?" (Milk and Cake Press), a 2020 Pushcart nominee, and a 2020 Creative Nonfiction Foundation Science-as-Story Fellow. His work has appeared in Seneca Review, The Asahi Shimbun, Beltway Quarterly, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, American Journal of Nursing, Neurology, and others, and has been translated into Farsi, Greek, Italian, German, Turkish, Romanian, and Portuguese.