The Danaids

(The Danaids, or Danaides, were the fifty daughters of Danaus, promised in marriage to their fifty cousins. They murdered their husbands on their wedding night, and after they died, spent eternity in Hades carrying water in leaky jugs.)

We'll go another round if you'll just let us.
Take back your sentence, Judges. Send us home.
The world has had enough time to forget us
And what we did. Remove us from this stone-
And-sulfur place. Put out these stinking flames
That all our leaky jars and all their water
Could never quite make cinders.
                                         But our claims
Mean nothing to blind Judgment. Danaus' daughters
Were beauties, once, and yes, we could have loved them —
those fifty brothers we were made to marry —
As fifty uncle's daughters. But we learned
That force spills love like liquid; ours drained from them
and trickled out our split hearts, fragmentary
as empty shells, fit only to be burned.