Um novo poema de Seamus Heaney. «Testimony: The Ajax Incident»
adapted from Sophocles, Ajax

“Lamps had gone out, the late sentries dozed,
When something just came over him.
He rose And rigged for action, lifted down
His two-edged slashing sword, a bedside weapon
He kept like a second bedmate, then slipped outside
Far more nimbly than you’d have expected
For a man his size, with that night-mirroring
Blade in hand, aloft. Anything
I said meant nothing to him, mere
Wife-babble, ignored the same as ever,
Even though this time there was no attack
Being sounded, no command.

Then he was back,
In through the tent door like a conquering drover
With his captives on a rope: bull calf, heifer,
Milk cows, rams and ewes, the very sheepdogs.
How long he’d rampaged through their pens and paddocks
Or why he was herding them I couldn’t tell
Until the butchering started. I can still
Hear the slosh of innards, piss and muck.
Some he beheaded with a single stroke
Down through the neck bone, some he wrestled flat,
Legs and belly up, and cut their throats,
For all the spurted dung and kicks and horn-toss.
Some that he tied and tortured like prisoners
Slit by slit, hamstring and lip and ear,
Just bled to death, hoofs beating at a chair.

At last there came a lull, then a tirade
Against those chiefs he thought he’d left for dead
On the floor behind him, once comrades, men of honour,
But now reviled; he stood by the tent door
Bellowing hate and havoc and their names.
Then, bloody-spoored and raving, in he comes,
Returning to his senses bit by bit,
And starts to butt the tent-pole, going quiet
As he climbs and slips and struggles through a mess
Of entrails splattered and opened carcasses.
And so for a long while he just lay there dumb,
Dragging his nails and fingers for a comb
Through his slathered hair, breathing like a beast
Slack-mouthed and winded. But came round at last,
Risen off all fours to overbear,
Turning on me to explain the massacre,
So I told him what I think he knew he’d done.

Then Ajax raised his voice in lamentation,
At bay now and in disproof of his rule
That warriors didn’t weep, they weren’t old women –
But soon his head-back, harrowing wail
Turned to the long deep moaning of a bull.

Slumped, slow motioned, he is in there still,
Ensconced on a pile of slaughtered meat and offal,
Lowing to himself. Something gathers head
And is going to happen. We must pay him heed.
Nothing is over, only overdue.
A friend should go to him. One, friends, of you.”

in Newsletter/Times Literary Supplement/25 de Novembro de 2004
  ¶ 10:42