If you believe that deaths do come in threes
and that we are maskers in some Greek play
then I am deathless, immortal to disease.
No foe’s hand can spill my blood nor make me pay
the infinite cost of my one own life;
it must be by my hand: no other way.
Mother and grandmother both fell on their own knife
and someday the three will demand their third.
Must I then obey? make a widow of my wife?
A violent but inviolable word
plunges my life toward fatalistic crime–
an apostasy, a man self-murdered.
My joys, like hunted things, measure out their time
as this tragic poem awaits its final rhyme.
The Suicide of Lucretia: detail. Meester met de Papegaai (1525) |
Just in case anyone is worried. I'm not actively thinking about suicide. It's just a subject that's been on my mind a lot recently given my mom's passing in January. Additionally, I've been reading through a modern translation of Euripides and the subject surfaces in almost every play thus far.