The best visions are those that follow the poet. Cassandra knows them; Cassandra waits for them; but Cassandra does not understand them, spoken as they are in an unwieldy tongue, all sober balanced syllables that rhyme Aeneas' name with accents of greatness, danger and destiny all wrapped in one, all that she could have wished for him and a thousand, thousand times more. She hears her own name upon the poet's lips only once, and knows without having to ask that the lines that follow are only one more empty hollow in the history of the world. (What else, after all, could they be?)
with apologies to Le Guin's Lavinia....
Cassandra knows them; Cassandra waits for them; but Cassandra does not understand them, spoken as they are in an unwieldy tongue, all sober balanced syllables that rhyme Aeneas' name with accents of greatness, danger and destiny all wrapped in one, all that she could have wished for him and a thousand, thousand times more.
She hears her own name upon the poet's lips only once, and knows without having to ask that the lines that follow are only one more empty hollow in the history of the world.
(What else, after all, could they be?)