Last Child of Oedipus goes Childless

Rebecca Rustin

 

King Creon forbids that Polyneices, brother of Antigone and Ismene, be granted proper burial. The body lies exposed on the battlefield. Antigone, against Ismene’s advice, buries him. Creon condemns Antigone to a cave where she hangs herself. Haemon, Creon’s son and Antigone’s betrothed, finds her, kills himself with his sword, and dies with her in his arms. – Antigone, by Sophocles  

Many say Ismene

Stood for days at the mouth
Of the cave

Where Antigone

Lay with Haemon
Her champion
 
Their love
Lost to rule of
Law

They say Ismene held
A mason’s trowel
Though whether
 
She hoped to
Dig something up
Or smooth something
 
Over
No one
Could say
 
She’d go
Down to the
Watching place
 
See celebrity
Couples
Crumble
 
Celebrity sisters
Unite before
A violent ex
 
Suitors
Hesitated then
Turned away
 
Only one soldier of
Theseus could hold
Her against a tree
 
At the maenad bash
She brandished her
Thyrsus unbacchicly
 
At the gathering
Place she picked
The kind of beans
 
Philosophers
Said contained
The souls of the dead
 
Did she sleep
In a bower pricked
With rosemary
 
Did she stumble
As she wandered
There was a fallen
 
Spruce she liked
To balance on
A particular
 
Point in the sky
To look into
As she told
 
Her father and
Sister
Everything
 
She wore sequined
Dolce e Gabbana
Jumpsuits with
 
White boots and a long face
Her brother as ever
A cipher
 
A filing away
Of secrets  A
Gateway to
 
Newer forms
Of disaster
Polyneices
 
Whom Antigone
Loved but Ismene
Could not
 
His hand on the back
Of her neck  Her
Knees on the grass
 
 

 

Rebecca Rustin is a freelance writer and translator in Montreal, QC, with poems in Prism and Pioneertown.