Insatiable conqueror,

it is a barren land you have usurped.

With disdain, you have subdued

this body, a battlefield.

Every day a new punishment

you inflict on this unrooted

and in darkness

you plunder her sacred temple.

Gorged with hybris (1)

you started an unjust war,

without dread, without scruple,

strong in your fortune.

Great Cyrus (2), skilled strategist, your arrogance

is your conviction: for a refusal denied,

a head drowns in the wineskin (3)!

For everything you have done,

for everything you didn’t do

and for everything you could have done;

I am Fury (4), I am Nemesis (5),

I am Vendetta!

This empty shell exists

to torture you,

I am, to punish you,

wrathful wrath! These weary eyes reflect

their artist, genius of Lies.

Creator of abominations here is your product!

I am, for you are,

your slave and your chastisement,

I am Tomyris, I am

your defeat until

the day of your Judgment when,

without joy, I shall look my maker

for the last time.

And I will be Fury, I will be Nemesis,

I will be Vendetta!

Notes

(1) from Greek ‘haughtiness, insolence’ – the personification of humans’ prevarication against the divine will: the pride that, derived from one’s own power or fortune, manifests itself in an attitude of stubborn overestimation of one’s own strength, and as such is punished by the gods or earthly institutions (Treccani).

(2) Persian emperor, founder of the Achaemenid empire.

(3) Cyrus, to expand his empire, proposes to the queen of the Massagetae, Tomyris, to marry him. She refuses him, so Cyrus starts a war against the Massagetae, where he loses his life. Tomyris dishonours his body by immersing his head in a wineskin full of blood, a symbol of his insatiability.

(4) In Roman mythology, the Furies personify vengeance. In Greek mythology,, they are called the Erinyes and are three sisters: Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megaera.

(5) In Greek mythology, she is the goddess who distributes Justice, which is understood as compensatory or restorative justice. She provides for unsolved or unpunished crimes by persecuting the culprits.