Oracles

“ SABBE PI DUKKHAM ” (Everything is Sorrow) A LESSON FROM EURIPIDES Written in Lamma Sayadaw Kyoung, Akyab LAUGHTER in the faces of the people Running round the theatre of music When the cunning actors play the Bacchae, Greets the gay attire and gait of Pentheus, Pentheus by his blasphemy deluded, Pentheus caught already in the meshes Of the fate that means to catch and crush him, Pentheus going forth with dance and revel, Soon by Bassarids (wild joys of Nature) To be hunted. Ai ! the body mangled By the fatal fury of the Maenads Led by Agave his maddened mother (Nature’s self). But this the people guess not, Only see the youth in woman’s raiment, Feignèd tresses drooping from his forehead, Awkward with unwonted dress, rude waving Aye the light spear tipped with mystic pine-cone ; Hear his boast who lifts the slender thyrsus : “ I could bear the mass of swart Cithaeron, 133