Into this wild Abyss/ The womb of Nature, and perhaps her grave--/ Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,/ But all these in their pregnant causes mixed/ Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight,/ Unless the Almighty Maker them ordain/ His dark materials to create more worlds,--/ Into this wild Abyss the wary Fiend/ Stood on the brink of Hell and looked a while,/ Pondering his voyage; for no narrow frith/ He had to cross
When Eve left the Garden did she glance over her shoulder and capture a last glimpse of what would never be hers again? When Icarus fell, did he laugh? Or did he scream, plummeting away from his joyous summit? Had the ascent, and the pinnacle, been worth the burning? What of Satan and his archangels? Better to reign in hell, than to serve in heaven? What of Achilles, and Patroclus? When Achilles’s pride had wrought the death of his friend, had he wished to sail home to Greece and forget all the glories of Troy, only to see one more glimpse of his companion’s smile? Did something in the hero Gilgamesh wilt the moment he learned of his own mortality?
These are the questions that plague Orestes as he stares out at a sea, trying to remember a song as if through a half-forgotten dream. The words do not come to him; nor does the rhythm. Instead, he knows he has forgotten it only because there is an aching absence in his chest, as if someone has cleaved from him not his flesh but the space within the breastbone that all men carry their innermost feelings, and thoughts, and wants. Those things too, seem far away and inaccessible. The expression on his face can only be defined as hungry—but beyond that, famished, as if he is a man without food, without water, starving on the shoreline.
He does not let the water touch him. He stares at it distrustful and uncertain. When the cry splits the air he thinks, for a moment, it is his own.
That is the song.
But you won’t take me back.
Those are the words.
You’ll never take me back!
That is the feeling of his ruinous heart.
Orestes begins to trot, slow-fast, then slow, slow, nearly frozen, when he sees her on the shoreline. He does not remember her. He does not remember much of anything, anymore. Only that when he wakes up with salt tears in his eyes, that salt once belonged to the sea.
His voice cracks. His voice doesn’t come out when he tries to speak; only a strangled sound.
He tries again.
“It… it won’t take me back, either.”
