The White Swan

                The White Swan

                SOLO SCENE


                (Enheduanna's Great Speech)


(The actress alone on stage, under a blazing, blinding sunlight. Arms raised, wide white sleeves soaring like the wings of a bird above the imagined square below. A long pause. She looks down — toward the people. Then raises her eyes — toward the sky. Then again — toward the people.)




                ENHEDUANNA.


People of Sumer, listen!
(Silence. She lowers her arms — slowly, like wings folding after flight.)

Look at me.

Look at my hands — there is no rage in them, no iron.
Long ago, my father Sargon of Akkad sent me to you.
He sent me to seal an alliance —
to unite this world that wars and eternal vengeance
had torn apart to the very bone.
At that time, I obeyed the will of the empire.
But time flowed like the waters of the Euphrates.
And this sacred land transformed me.

Today — before you and before the face of the gods —
I am no longer the daughter of a conqueror.
I am no longer the voice of Akkad.
Today I am whole. I am one.
Today I am only your High Priestess,
devoted to our god Nanna,
who lights our nights.

(Pause. She speaks without anger.)

The gods see your merits, people of Sumer.
They see these canals dug in the sweat of your brow.
These granaries bursting with grain.
This order that holds back chaos.
Your labors are great —
and the earth will remember your builders forever.
But tell me —
when the last worker returns home,
when the last lamp in the archive goes dark,
when the creak of the wheel falls silent
and the counting of grain comes to an end —
what feeds your spirit when night falls?

(A long pause. The wind stirs her sleeves.)


I know where this order came from.
I know its price.
Before our common law — there was only slaughter.
Before measure — there was only eternal vengeance.
Every city burned its neighbor.
Every king believed himself the only god on earth.
Do not return to those shadows.
But do not lock your souls
into the dry cages of numbers.
Because a human being —
a human being is not only what they have built.
A human being is what they managed to feel
before they departed.

(Her voice rises — not with a cry, but with an inner force — like a wave coming from within.)

In each of you lives a spark of the gods!
Before the gaze of the stars —
there is neither Sumerian nor Akkadian!
The clay beneath your feet has already been bathed
in tears that have no language and no nation.
Is the blood of Sumer's mothers
different from the blood of Akkad's mothers?
Are the tears of Akkad less salty
than the tears of Sumer?
And does the pain of a widow in Ur
weigh less than the grief of a widow in Akkad?

(Pause. The silence of the square.)

I do not ask you to kneel before a crown.
No crown is worth a single tear of your child.
No victory is worth a single burned life.
I have brought you a Word — higher than the sword.
A Word that cannot be burned, cannot be crushed,
cannot be drowned in blood.
Because the Word —
the Word is the only thing that remains after us.
Stones crumble.
Walls fall.
The names of kings are erased from tablets.
But what has been said with love —
endures.

(She raises her arms — slowly, as at the beginning. The sleeves open wide. She is the Swan again.)

Listen to this breath that moves through all of us —
without distinction of blood, without distinction of cities,
without distinction of gods.




                We are of one breath.
                We are of one clay.
                We are of one eternity.




(She falls silent. Her arms lower one final time — like wings folding forever. The light fades slowly. Only her silhouette remains.)


(A long pause. Darkness.)




Thomas DJERAK