for Cassandre Berdoz
Cassandra does not sing the fall of Troy,
where Little Ajax raped her in the sanctuary.
She does not sing her slaughter by Clytemnestra
while Agamemnon beat his fists on the ground.
From the tower of the Cathedral called Notre Dame,
what Cassandra sings is the passage of time.
She sings the hour, east toward Jerusalem,
then south across the lake to Évian,
through the cardinal points, following on
the great bell that is called Mary Magdalen,
that shakes you with the aftermath of its hum-tone.
And there is another bell than this hourly bell,
smaller, a bell called Clemency, whose do
sounds a warning to announce and follow
calamity, carved with a bas relief to show
a gowned woman kneeling on a scaffold,
and an angel stays the sword of the executioner.
But I swear to you by each cobble and rafter,
Cassandra, I swear by the narrow red door
you opened for me in a wall of stone
melting like a sugar cube in the rain,
I tell you, long ago I knew someone
who heard the hours pass, felt the commotion,
but could not rise to flee from where she lay,