Antigone: A Sonnet

This was written as a prize (a poor one, I'm sorry to say) for the winner of last Tuesday's competition.

Antigone

The first I read of you was Anouilh's play.
I loved at once your pagan piety
And bloody-mindedness. Sang strong to me,
Your barefoot wanderings, too, at break of day.
Your uncle Creon, had a mind of clay,
Pragmatic, bourgeois, crude morality.
You shamed his dull respectability
With your existential 'acte gratuit'. I'd lay

A mina to a drachma, Sophocles's
Far greater tragedy had no such effect
On my sixteen-year-old character as you
Did with your cold self-will. My heart freezes
Still at your suicidal self-neglect.
Killing yourself, you to yourself were true.