WEBVTT

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This next poem is based
on Euripides' play

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where Heracles--

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Hercules-- comes back from
performing his 12 deeds

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and iris, the goddess, puts
madness in his vision, in his .

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Mind and he ends up
killing his children.

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And it's titled
"Chorus and Hero."

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When it came, it came with eyes.

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We could not close our
eyes to escape its gaze.

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When it came, it
came with eyes that

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looked through our lids,
that looked through our eyes.

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Its eyes looked below
the hair on our heads

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that did or did not blow
in the wind branching out

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of our brains.

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The sky gathered in the cave
where each one of us says I,

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and I echoes.

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It came and gazed into us, until
it found itself staring back.

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When he returned
from the underworld,

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he thought his eyes
were the same eyes

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he opened to the shades.

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His eyes dilated in the dark
until he could see in the dark.

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The darkness opened in his
head until his head could not

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contain it.

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He did not know night
followed him when he returned.

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He could not see behind him.

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His children stared at
him with his own eyes

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when he came home to see them.

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He did not know he was
the danger they were in.

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The gods put vision in his eyes.

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He did not think he could not
see the difference long ago.

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He notched the arrows he shot.

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Sometimes, we see with our
ears the blood on hero's hands.

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Sometimes, the hero walks out
from his house with his hands

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held out, as if to ask us, who
cannot help but see if these

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blood covered hands are mine.

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Are these hands mine?

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It's hard to see in the night
flowing out behind the hero's

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head if these hands are mine.

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If these hands are mine to
close, mine to turn palms up,

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mine to bring close
to my own head,

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to cover our eyes
with the same hands.

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We do not want to see
ourselves looking at our hands.

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Children look through the
mirrors their parents gave them

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for eyes.

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Tears come out the
mirrors when they cry.

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The mirrors widen in the dark,
but in the dark show less.

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The mirrors widened in fear,
a little door in the mirror

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opens wider.

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We who gave birth to
them live in a cave

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in their heads, a cave in
which we watch ourselves

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as they hide behind a column,
behind their mother's robes,

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our children's eyes.

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When a force moves through
us, and our arms act

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because our minds command them,
when our mind obeys our eyes,

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but our eyes are
not our own eyes,

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when we see as we
are forced to see,

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when the command comes from
the gods hiding inside the eye,

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replacing our eyes
with a vision,

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we do not say I. We say we.

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We say we did this.

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We did this act.

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And when it's worse,
when it's my hands, when

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these hands are mine, we
don't say we, we say it.

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We say, it came upon me,
a force none could resist,

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soul or breath, God or
madness, that acted in me.

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It came.

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And when it came,
it came with eyes.

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