"Your tears serve but to wash my wounds in salt." - Biweekly Theater Writing Challenge #9

Last night I found myself inspired and started working on this scene. It would be part of Sundan, where our tragic hero's closest friend Bastian finds out that he's loves their friend Juliana. From Sundan I am going for shame turned into rage at his helplessness to positively deal with his feelings and his situation. With Bastian I'm trying to convey that mixture of pity for the sufferer's plight and profound embarrassment on their behalf that you are seeing something they would rather hide. As a person who is often deeply ashamed to be a victim or to be helpless in dire straits, the situation resonates with me on both sides. Though it could use some polishing, I think I'm on to something, and I believe there is some real poetry among these lines. It needs a clearer lead into the scene, and it needs a firmer ending, but the meat of it is something real.

BASTIAN: Jesus wept, sweet Sundan, can it be so
That you love our fair friend Juliana?

SUNDAN: Speak not of this to me.

BASTIAN: Heaven forfend but I see past your eyes!
O most ill-starred and tragic turn of fate!
O most pitiable of fortune’s dogs!

SUNDAN: Speak not of this! As you love me, speak not!

BASTIAN: Never till this moment had I seen.
How canst thou have hid a thing like this,
A weight and meaning of such vast import,
With scarce a word or nod even to me?
Have I not shed my blood beside you, kept
Your counsel, stood first among your men,
Your dearest friend, and yet you told me not?

SUNDAN: This thing was never meant to leave the dark,
Not before your eyes nor Juliana’s!
When hope is dead before even its birth,
What profits aught for it to come to light?

BASTIAN: How long? How long have you lov’d her, Sundan?

SUNDAN: Ever, always, then and now.
A truth I buried deep for fear that she
Would never look on me as I on her,
Until the day when I resolv’d to speak,
A boy in my command won her away,
And sure I saw what I had ever known.
Wherefore do you groan and grimace so?

BASTIAN: My heart is torn in two for you.

SUNDAN: Your heart must no rival in tenderness,
That I am most wretched of love’s fools,
And yet Bastian bravely suffers so.

BASTIAN: I pray forgive but pity lays me low.

SUNDAN: Villain that you are for that pity,
For naught but its cruel blade may bleed me else,
As torn and bare as this has left me.
You drag my darkest bruises out all whilst
You twist in borrow’d shame for my sad state.
For shame hide thy long and louring face!
Your tears serve but to wash my wounds in salt.
Beset me no more with condoling blows
Lest you draw your keen compassion from its sheath
And with your loving kindness cleave me raw.
To think we make much of love and mercy!
Of mankind’s wonder, gloried gifts of God
To raise us to more than ungentle beasts,
One murders me by inch and ell for years,
The other works but to draw out my pains.
I’ll no more of man’s glories, sir, and pray
God may make me unmoved as a stone
To be no more burn’d with human warmth,
Or else consum’d, to bleed for this no more.

BASTIAN: In justness to your wishes I defer.
I’ll not presume to prick your plight anew.
For all the grieving fullness of my heart,
I can do naught to set things right for you,
And my empty words make you no solace.
Beyond them I have nothing.

SUNDAN: If have you nothing, I’d have that nothing from you,
For nothing can be remedy alone,
In only nothing may my sorrows end.

BASTIAN: You speak as with some evil toy within
You as I could not bear to see you act.
I fear behind those palled eyes does haunt
The glimmer of some desperate thing.

SUNDAN: Fear not but that all desperate things have chas’d
On heels one after other through my mind.
But long time can teach us patience as we
By no means other, hard or well, may learn.
Time I’ve had in plenty in this state,
In no lesser measure than but pain,
And my stern schoolmaster has laid it out
To learn elsewise is where perdition lies.
With soldier’s steadfast pace, I soldier on,
And as in war, in time all turns to scars.

BASTIAN: Thy wounds look fresh to me, old friend,
Fresh as engaged rings on fingers slipp’d.

SUNDAN: New wounds are habit too by now, so just
The same I’ve learned to bear them as they break.
There is no ministering to this hurt,
So well content to do me no more pain.

BASTIAN: Forgive me more most hollow words, but know
Naught would I spare to change this thing for you.
If it within my power lay, the earth
Would shake and groan to see it were not so.

SUNDAN: Then were my Bastian Atlas, with shoulders broad
To move both the earth and a lady’s love.
Leave me, old friend. Spare me the burden of your eyes.

(Exit BASTIAN.)

SUNDAN: It is as if I crumble piece by piece.
Now Bastian has my ancient secret out!
In span of years I ne’er myself betray’d.
It is this gnawing madness breaks me down;
With each day it wears more away my soul.
Sure that Marcus envies no man his joy,
Nor genders no man’s pity. There is no way
That he does not exceed my measure.
Oh, if my old friend could see the whole of it.
No mercy Bastian owes to me besides
Such pity as we show a fallen horse
With leg too shattered again to rise.