Bernard Page 3
 

someone who loves Theseus~even my mother didn't love
   me!~
gave him one end of the thread.
                          And she waits for him, holding the other,
    standing patiently at the dark hole where she saw him
       disappear,
frightened and hopeful, feeling each quiver and jerk of the
   thread with fear,
    to keep her dearest love from being killed and eaten by
       me.

                     What if I follow the line
              it shows, white, in the darkness?

Lord sun above me, beyond this mantle of rock~
if I follow the thread, will it lead me back up to the sweet-
   tongued air


and the sighing of the sea, back to life, to light, to even
a hope for love under the sky, from this hell ripped away?

                 It slackens.
                                     Grab it, now, beast!

                                                       It is so light~so frail~
how could anything so fragile be a promise a beast could
   believe,
a hope in this slaughterhouse, this fist of stench and
   weeping~
my hope?

          I'll let you guide me, one way to my death
at the hands of Theseus, the other to a girl's hands, bright
   with day.

                 Lead me, thread. And do not break
                 until I am dead or free.