Penelope to Ulysses

From Ovid's Heroides, translated by Harold Isbell (1990):

Penelope to the tardy Ulysses:
do not answer these lines, but come, for
Troy is dead and the daughters of Greece rejoice.
But all of Troy and Priam himself
are not worth the price I've paid for victory.
How often I have wished that Paris
had drowned before he reached our welcoming shores.
If he had died I would not have been
compelled now to sleep in my cold bed
complaining always of the tiresome
prospect of endless nights and days spent working
like a poor woman at my tedious loom.

...

You are my refuge and my home, my husband.
Have a father's concern for your son;
let us see a son's concern for your father
who waits now for you to close his eyes.
Just remember, I was a young girl when you left;
if you came at once you would find an old woman.

* * *

Clare Pollard performs from her new translation of Ovid's Heroides
Phaedra to Hippolytus: (youtube)