Antigone Poem by Janina Degutyte

Farewell, my bridegroom - I have never kissed you.
Farewell, my son - who never was.
Love brought me here and love will show me out...
In trembling hands the flutter of a captive morning gust.
But I will come again.
A thousand times.
Across the desert sand,
the rain-soaked clay,
the firesites, -
I will be back.
To bury brothers in the dead of night.
I will come barefoot.
I will be unarmed, with empty hands.
The law which calls me stands above all laws.
And if - they curse me,
or ignore me,
Or have their courts condemn me for the thousandth time, -
I shall not be condemned.
And I will come again
and haunt them
as I walk the battlefield at night -
This salty crust -
in which
I bury brothers -
black and white.
A tyrant's shadow hovers heavy over land and sea
And names of slaves are scorched on our faces with the mark of shame, -
And thus - I must be back.
A thousand times.
To breathe the dark in which your body is enshrined.
To hold your helpless head.
To place the blade against your side.
Condemned a thousand times.
Your sister.
Your Antigone.