Penelope and Ulysses by Zenovia

not come of your own free will,
    I will keep your wife and son alive
    but they will be sexual servants to me and my men.
    Sometimes, my friend,
    there are worse things than death.
    ULYSSES: I will come on my own free will and with a full heart.
    AGAMEMNON: [ looks out the window and yells to his men ] Let the boy go.
    Go to your son, Penelope.
    Your husband has seen reason
    and has been healed from his madness.
    The gods have given me such powers.
    ULYSSES: I will come.
    I will come of my free will and a full heart.
    I pledge myself to this cause and this war.
    I will not speak the truth to our men.
    We will destroy Troy,
    their language and culture.
    We will make their world in our image
    and everyone will have our culture by force,
    our way of life.
    I am happy to open the doors to hell
    and Agamemnon. And I will follow
    and cut down the generations of my enemy,
    who have the distorted reason of hate,
    the desire to obliterate other men’s lives
    as if they are a plague of locusts.
    Or are we the plague?
    I will come with you
    and I will assist you in this quest.
    AGAMEMNON : Good thinking, Ulysses.
    Nothing like a crisis to bring you back to us.
    My dear Ulysses, not being in battle
    has left you with a twisted depth.
    I have come at the right time.
    This journey will lift your spirits
    and fill your coffers.
    I have come at the right time.
    Had I left you any longer in Ithaca
    you would have followed in the footsteps of Socrates.
    I mean, what was his use in life?
    Death has improved him, don’t you think?
    We can’t have philosophers,
    poets, or anarchists
    running reason and civilisation.
    I have seen many men die.
    I have slaughtered many men.
    I have no regrets.
    I have slaughtered my own daughter.
    And you must coil and coil
    the thread of life around and around
    the throat of the unsuspecting,
    and then you pull them down
    and strike hard into their heart.
    All the while they will feel
    surprise, fear, or even betrayal.
    You see, Ulysses, you could not sacrifice you son.
    Therefore, I am a stronger, nobler man.
    Men surrender quicker
    when you betray them
    with the threat of slaughtering their “pretty ones” 31
    and sexually consuming their wives.
    It always works. And that is why, my Ulysses,
    you must never love—
    wives, children, men
    are there for you to use as tools,
    to gain power, fame, prestige, wealth.
    This is who we are and this is how we have what we have.
    We certainly have not worked for it.
    Have you ?
    ULYSSES: We certainly have not worked for it,
    like the ox
    and like the peasants in the field.
    AGAMEMNON: This is how you become a collector of many men!
    You break them in spirit
    and you collect them
    in the hunt of the night.
    Coil around and around their throats
    the thread of distortion and deception
    and then strike!
    Deep,
    deep,
    deeper.
    Until nothing remains pulsing,
    flowing, beating, moving.
    We have hunting to do, Ulysses.
    Bring your nets.
    We have many wild creatures to catch
    in the sky, in the sea
    and on the soil of Troy.
    Come, Ulysses, you clever fox.
    Take me to the eggs of their next generations
    so that I can smash all of them.
    [ ULYSSES and AGAMEMNON exit . YOUNG PENELOPE and PENELOPE start the chorus . The tapestry is war scenes and the colour is deep red .]
    YOUNG PENELOPE: Dear God, set me free from all the pain.
    “And when I keep to my bed, soaked in dew,
    And the thoughts go groping through the night,
    And the good dreams that used to guard my sleep.
    Not here.
    Terror, is at my neck.” 32
    PENELOPE: “And swooping lower, all could see,
    plunging their claws into a hare, a mother
    bursting with unborn young—the babies spilling
    quick spurts of blood—cut off! the race just dashing into life!
    Blood will have blood.
    BOTH: Blood will have blood
    and suffer, suffer into truth.” 33
    YOUNG PENELOPE: “They are kneeling by the bodies of the dead,
    embracing men and brothers,
    infants over the aged loins that gave them life, and sobbing,
    as the yoke