how Ariadne, trailing crimson thread,
gathered the pebbles; how the dead king’s head
reddened the corridors the regicide
asperged in vain (he never got outside,
and though he gnawed his trophy white, still died);
how Phaedra languished in her mother’s tower
and never stepped outside it from the hour
her sister turned the key and occupied
the Cretan throne, from which she pacified
the rebels with a promise to abdicate
when Theseus got out; how she made a state
and ran it well; why Cretans wished to purge
all trace of the old king’s bulwarks and submerge
his secrets in feigned openness, and why
the void called voice devised this curious I?