Hecuba's Song for Astyanax

Horses by the hundred await your father's break-ing, and still the war, marooned, plunges dully on,past bronze, past iron, moored in rust. Twelvedaughters' dowries given or received (we'vekept our girls close, so what counts as cost?); oldPriam is nine years closer to his end—

aren't we all?—but I see death dogging him, lend-ing the lie to stone each time daybreakslants across his walls. Priam named his death "Hektor"on the day your father was born—this sonamong fifty, defender of the city. But Priam also won't believethis tangle of fates could involve

Hektor's death: botched hospitality; the impossible resolveof goddesses scorned; an awkward friend-ship with love's lure or reward—that girl we receiveand receive and receive as if beauty didn't habitually breakor raze or besiege whoever takes it in—poor Helenmust bear hers but the rest of us behold—

and it is worse to witness. Andromache toldme she spied your father choosing for you twelvemore foals. How he has always insisted oncalling you Scamandrius, while the rest defendyour name as Astyanax—Lord of the City—which breaksyour father's heart, your mother told me. I believe

her; she believes your father; your father grievesat what all this belief must mean: that one barely one day oldhas his life subsumed to a sign. Birth can't breakor end a war, but war's red barbarity absolves the breaking of a baby in whose blood Troy's splend-or runs abundant, coursing nascent occasion

for a whole city's hope (or an old woman's mon-ologue). As long as you are alive we can believeyour father lives, and lives by the thousand dependon his—a single slender thread of fire holdingback lions, their patience by ten or twelvewinters eaten—the way any windbreak

grows olive groves—the way my mother's features breakacross your face, the present putting onthe past—the spring she died (twelvesprings ago) the birds fell silent, but did not leave.Now they follow their song, and all Troy's gold—however finely wrung by Andromache's wish—won't end

their abandoning. Though she's detained pieces of their sound,and all we hear would urge belief that daybreakhas broken between the sky's frozen goldand a town's penned gilded trilling. But dawnhalved and landed turns on itself, or moribund. We'veoffered to the gods—our best wine, twelve

tender ocher heifers in each shrine, twelvetimes twelve yearlings never broken or branded—now the animals scatter when incense begins; I'veprayed until I can't remember for what—breakthis or that head-long terror's killing streak—amnesia more sudden,less explicit of late—amnesia nags while memory scolds

that tomorrow you will turn one year old,and Cassandra—almost twelve,though she still sees you as a cousin—has givenPriam her promise to give you her swing. End-ing her swinging will, he hopes, breakher of her babble—but the sight won't leave her so easily—it cleavesto the body it's chosen, ice clear and as cold.Cassandra caught me today at daybreakjust as I started to let your starlings go—of our twelvedaughters, she's always been the one to mendmy plans—adorable, dire scion—the one to look on

as the starlings hovered, returned to alight ontheir perches. We opened all the pens. They won't leave,now, until the end.Their quiet will keep yours company. They toldme what you would see at the tower, twelvesprings after my mother's body was taken by the break

water: War itself will break around the body Hektor abandons.His chest will open. Out will fly twelve siegeless days, a peace inpieces, each holding its ends: on the eve of battle, the rhapsodes begin.