harsh news

that binds her soul to its bed with grief?

Woman has a wrongturned harmony:

some evil sad helplessness

comes to dwell in her

when she has pain or despair.

That breeze shot through my womb once.

But to Artemis of childbirth,

the heavenly one

who rules arrows,

I cried out

and praise god!

she came to me.

But here is the old Nurse at the door,

bringing Phaidra out of the house.

What is it—my soul longs to know—

what has so changed the body of my queen?

[Enter NURSE from palace with PHAIDRA on a bed
carried by (female) Servants.]

NURSE.

Ah, humans and their ailments! Gas and gloom!

What should I do for you? Or not do?

Here is your daylight, here is your bright open air,

here is your sickbed brought out of the house—

“Outside!” you said. “Take me outside!”—

but any minute you’ll rush back in.

Every joy disappoints.

What’s here doesn’t please you,

what’s far off you crave.

Better to be sick than tend the sick.

The one is simple, the other

work, work, work, work and worry.

Now every mortal life has pain

and sweat is constant,

but if there is anything dearer than being alive

it’s dark to me.

We humans seem disastrously in love with this thing

(whatever it is) that glitters on the earth—

we call it life. We know no other.

The underworld’s a blank

and all the rest just fantasy.

PHAIDRA.

Lift my body, raise my head.

I’ve gone loose in the joints of my limbs.

Take my hands, servants.

This headbinder is heavy,

take it away, let down my hair on my shoulders.

NURSE.

There, child, don’t throw yourself around so.

The disease will feel lighter

if you stay calm.

We all must suffer.

PHAIDRA.

AIAI! [cry of pain] How I long for a dewcold spring

and pure running water!

To lie back

beneath black poplars,

to sink deep in the long grass of a field!

NURSE.

Child, what are you shouting?

Don’t say such things where people can hear.

Your words ride toward madness.

PHAIDRA.

Send me to the mountains! I will go to the woods,

to the pine woods

where

hunting dogs race to the kill,

closing in on dappled deer.

How I long

to cry the hounds onward

and let fly a spear fly

from alongside my yellow hair,

floating

the weapon in my hand!

NURSE.

Why harm yourself like this?

What do you care about hunting?

What do you want with cold running springs?

Right next to the wall is a stream where you can drink.

PHAIDRA.

Queen of the salt lake,

Artemis,

lady of racetracks

where horses’ hooves pound,

how I long to be on your ground

riding,

breaking

wild northern colts!

NURSE.

Crazy talk!

One minute you’re gone to the mountains to hunt,

the next you want colts and flat beaches!

It would take a mighty prophet to say