An Asp, Cleopatra?

The throb of your breast is other than it was yesterday — the day when brows were rubbed in the dust, brows that had wearied of diadems, finding them thorns, and yearned toward the roses, and set a parting between your temples... And this pallor in your face is a crescent in the history of the moon...

An asp, Cleopatra — and at your breast?

It writhes, it writhes... In the heaven of your body are a thousand serpents, each deadlier than the one that lies in wait at the spring of honey and milk; it writhes.

A serpent denied your first mother Paradise, and a serpent has denied you the paradise you were living. But you are ever the conqueror: and see, your little companions have gone forth to avenge you; there they go, taking vengeance upon us, serpent for serpent.

And what is your acquaintance with love, Cleopatra?

Alas for this shore — a whip of flame; upon it you grew, and in its folds you had your dealings: ask Alexandria, and Rome, and Tarsus, and Actium, and Jerusalem... And you knew love before lovers had grasped it. Early was your acquaintance with love; early, your acquaintance with blood.

And what is love, Cleopatra?

A giant, and a fathomless vault, and a young girl displaying a body... a woman's body; and the giant takes fright, and the ravening beast throws himself upon the little foot and kisses it — yet with no abjectness. And a smile: that is love — and the meeting of two lips... Weep no more, O lover, in your bed, and learn from the little loving girl.

And horses' hooves drummed in every quarter, and in their neighing was the name of Rome, the eternal city; and a mocking laugh rang out, its echo heard in the Capitol:

"I came, I saw, I conquered!" Ha, ha! Behold the hero, O Rome, husband of all your women: he leaves his armies and his charges and sets about a new conquest.

Who is the conqueror now, Caesar? Will you not say: "I came, I saw, I conquered"?

Yes — it is Aphrodite raised up anew: did she not come forth from a bundle and stand before you, while you gaped in astonishment, just as Aphrodite burst from the foam of the blue sea? And is she not of the very stock of the gods? No blame on you if you were conquered: did you ever taste in Gaul, O victor, what you taste now, fettered in chains?

Where is Calpurnia? Where are your other wives? Has not this Eastern goddess the right to mock the Capitol? To Rome, then — and set her up as ruler over the center of the earth, mother of your son and your successor.

And if you die, fear no barrenness in the heart of your beloved.

Like the sweet lake toward which the streams rush headlong, tossing and clamorous in their descent from on high: she gathers them into a heaven of gentleness, and draws their waters — and in the taking there is bounty — then casts them forth again: a perpetual, unceasing process.

Ha! Were none of her lovers known but Caesar and Antony, but her brother and the giant? And who has counted the stars? And who turns to look at the brooks once he has known the rivers?

And Antony came to her — a new river.

A scornful smile on his lips: for he knew well the stings of sorcery. Cleopatra? Beauty? Enchantment? Aphrodite? He is Antony — force, might, Mars of iron... And it never dawned on him that his ancestor Mars stood disarmed before Aphrodite. He would show her who he was and who she was.

And she showed him who she was and who he was...

And he summoned her to Tarsus, to come cringing before him. And she went to Tarsus — and why hold back? Her love never in its life knew coyness. And her galley moored upon the coquettish shore. And it was she who summoned him: no refusal — but no going up, either. And the light dazzled him: where is your loftiness, Antony, and where your yellow smile? Did the crimson melt them both?

There is Rome, and her conquests: of no account, a civil war and the sundering of a state; and what matter? A hideous defeat, and suicide — and a name

Yours was my country — a gift from the emperors of Rome; and the giving away of other people's lands is an old practice. And you spoke the tongue of my country, and upon your lips turned words that we utter still, recovering a fragrance.

And you visited my country: woe to you — what took your fancy in that Herod, that you set about tempting him, so that he set about seeking your destruction?.. Piety and devoutness — of these that Jew was kneaded; did you not see him, a generation and part of a generation later, slaughtering the infants of Bethlehem? Piety and devoutness: he sought to blot out beauty, and after that, the Maker of beauty... What took your fancy in him, Cleopatra?

The adversary of your beloved, and your own adversary: Octavian the harsh. And the sea whose waves bore the report of your enchantment to the East and the North did not reach to Spain, where Octavian was; so he paid no heed to beauty, and the tidings of your conquests did not leave the gleaming lances of his conquests to rust. Caesar and Antony came and saw, and were conquered; Octavian did not come and did not see, and was not conquered... Blessed is he who believed without seeing — and blessed is he who loved without seeing.

But he came at last, and saw you... and was not conquered.
He was not conquered, and he did not triumph: for you did not fight.
And why should you fight, when the wars of your love aimed at an end that this adversary of yours, conquering or conquered, would never grant? Is this love, Cleopatra — a crown, a throne, and a son to inherit the kingdom of the earth? Where are your first lessons? Where is your giant, and the vault?

A love without pain. No misery and no anguish: neither party envies, neither burns with jealousy, neither crouches in a corner sobbing over the other's betrayal — a love of interest, betrayed by both. Is this love, Cleopatra? Is the body's summons enough, and the body's offering?

And that body, Cleopatra, which you offered — alas for it: it would, says Shakespeare through one of your beloved's men, make hungry where it satisfied. It killed where it gave life, and pressed out poison where it poured nectar.

An asp, Cleopatra? Is this the ending, while the earth still holds horizons you have not toyed with? An asp — and at your breast? It writhes, it writhes...