III. Curtain of Swords and Weave
3-1
A solo lyre's sound flows along the streets.
“O, my lover,
Why does your mood change faster than the clouds above?”
The audience's face is covered in sorrow.
“Ahh! How I wish she has clear eyes are that quick to
anger and laughter.
And dimples that crease in smiles and frowns.”
For the maiden he longs for,
Has a body of alabaster and fingers carved by scalpels.
In her runs blood of gold, and a heart woven from threads.
She has neither eyes nor dimples, lacking even a face.
For she is Aglaea's Garmentmaker.
Merely a demigod's serf.
3-2
The gilded dressmaster, the executive of romance.
How resplendent would her mansion be above the
radiant dawning clouds…
Nervously, the visitor opens the doors,
Like parting curtains at a theater.
The one with golden thread in hand is revealed, standing
betwixt figures of stone.
“Lady Aglaea,
I am Apollis's retainer, here for an outfit to take to my master.”
He casts sideways glances as he bows,
For the Garmentmaker he adores is flanking her mistress
Silent as a leaf accompanying a flower.
3-3
Slender hands sculpted of ivory pull up the dress's train,
As if with one breath alone,
The maiden will be revived.
“The creation of love and beauty indeed…”
As the visitor thinks thus, his thoughts prickle the golden threads in the room.
“If you wish to embrace such fantasies…”
She declares thus on the other end of the golden thread—
“You must beware of the scissors that can pierce through the chest.”
3-4
In the ancient theater,
There are thousands of plays, millions of shows,
Where even the god of romance was once an actor.
The weaver below the stage savors the show for inspiration—
The ostracized poet, finally returned home…
The adoring lovers, separated by misfortune…
The hero betrayed, fires his deadly arrow into the traitor's heart…
The thread known as romance is knit by all beings.
By all love and hatred, beauty and sin, memories and prophecies.
All that occurs… are clothing indeed.
Look! The despondent servant buried his love.
The dressmaster plucks it up, and into the
Garmentmaker's dress she weaves.
3-5
The elegant Garmentmakers once has beautiful faces,
Some as knights with swords,
Some as impassive priests.
And put on pantomime after pantomime in the golden thread's light.
Till the stage shoot in the storm,
And the black tide tainted the dancers' skirts.
She wiped clean their visages,
And instilled armaments instead of silk.
“Use the needle and thread as your sword.”
She requests the servants who cannot answer.
The “Garmentmakers” are elegant still.
They turn bloody and stained slaughter into the lithe rondos,
For only then can they still dress in new gowns.
Only then can romance survive into the morrow.