On the Mycenae road with its eucalyptus
trees you can find resiny
wine and cheese of sheep's milk "A la belle
Helene de Menelas," a tavern
that leads thought away from the blood
of the Atridae. Your palace, Agamemnon,
is a bandits' hide-out under Mount
Zara, of stone unscratched by roots,
perched over twisted ravines.
The poets speak much of you, of the crime
invented in your house of crises,
of Electra's sombre frenzy,
for ten years drawing her distant
brother to matricide with the eye
of her sex; the diabolical speak
of the queen's logic—wife
of the absent soldier Agamemnon,
mind, sword betrayed.
And you alone are lost
Orestes, your face vanished without
a golden mask. To the Lions of the gate,
and skeletons of the scenic harmony
raised by philologists of the stones,
greetings from a Greek Sicilian