Helen in Egypt: Poetry (New Directions Paperbook)
Page 13
and Hector slain; it was nothing,
the days of waiting were over;
perhaps his death was bitter,
I do not know; I am awake,
I see things clearly; it is dawn,
the light has changed only a little,
the day will come;
did he speak to me?
he seemed to say, it was nothing,
the arid plain, only the wind,
tearing the canvas loose,
and the tent-pole swaying,
and I lying on my pallet, awake
and hearing the flap of the sail,
the creak of the mast in the mast-hold,
and caring nothing for heat,
nothing for cold,
numb with a memory,
a sort of ecstasy of desolation,
a desire to return to the old
thunder and roar of the sea …
waiting to join Hector,
but I can not be slain,
I am immortal, invincible,
son of a Greek king;
did she taunt him then,
the little image,
fearless to plough the sea,
did she laugh to see her son,
entrapped in the armoury
of iron and ruin?
did she come,
his eidolon?
[2]
So this third Helen, for the moment, rejects both the transcendental Helen and the intellectual or inspired Helen for this other, “numb with a memory.”
So it was nothing, nothing at all,
the first words he seemed to speak
in my fever, awake or asleep;
it was nothing, the corridors,
the temple, the temple walls,
the tasks of the star-beasts,
the words I had spoken before
to Theseus, and my prayer;
it was nothing, the Amen-script,
the Writing, the star-space,
the Wheel and the Mystery;
it was all nothing,
and the anger of Paris
was only a breath to fan the flame
of thoughts too deep to remember,
that break through the legend,
the fame of Achilles,
the beauty of Helen,
like fire
through the broken pictures
on a marble-floor.
[3]
The memory is really that of Achilles but she lives it with him.
It was only then,
when the pictures had melted away,
that I saw him stretched on his pallet,
that I seemed to hear him say,
she failed me, my Daemon, my Goddess;
she had led him astray,
prompting an Old Man to guide her son
to a battered, unwieldly craft;
true, the boat had a mast,
but otherwise, it was a foreign
unseemly thing, with awkward sails —
where are the Thetis-wings?
it was only, when I felt
with him, lying there,
the bitterness of his loss,
that I knew he loved, that I knew
the ecstasy of desire had smitten him,
burnt him; touched with the Phoenix-fire,
the invincible armour
melted him quite away,
till he knew his mother;
but he challenged her, beat her back,
are you Hecate? are you a witch?
a vulture, a hieroglyph?
[4]
Helen “had watched as a careful craftsman, the pattern shape.” Indeed, she could never have done this, if she had not had the arduous, preliminary training or instruction of the Amen-script. She herself had told us that “you may penetrate every shrine, an initiate, and remain unenlightened at last.” Is the last enlightenment that of the woman Helen? Is it after all, as she had said, “very simple”?
As a circlet may break
in the heat of the smelting-fire,
or a plate of armour crack
or a buckler snap
or an axle-tree give way
or a wheel-rim twist awry,
so it seemed to me
that I had watched,
as a careful craftsman,
the pattern shape,
Achilles’ history,
that I had seen him like the very scenes
on his famous shield,
outlined with the graver’s gold;
true, I had met him, the New Mortal,
baffled and lost,
but I was a phantom Helen
and he was Achilles’ ghost.
[5]
Yes — Helen is awake, she sees the pattern; the “old pictures” are eternal, the ibis, the hawk and the hare are painted in bright primary colours. But superimposed on the hieroglyphs is the “marble and silver” of her Greek thought and fantasy.
Perhaps his death was bitter,
I do not know: I am awake,
the slats of the shutter make
a new pattern, seven and seven,
as the light moves over the wall;
I think I see clearly at last,
the old pictures are really there,
eternal as the painted ibis in Egypt,
the hawk and the hare,
but written in marble and silver,
the spiral-stair, the maze
of the intricate streets,
each turn of the winding
and secret passage-ways
that led to the sea,
my meanderings back and forth,
till I learned by rote
the intimate labyrinth
that I kept in my brain,
going over and over again
the swiftest way to take
through this arched way or that,
patient to re-trace my steps
or swift to dart
past a careless guard at the gate;
O, I knew my way,
O, I knew my ways,
and a sombre scarf
hid Helena’s eyes,
but not Helena’s passionate speech,
“only a Master Mariner
at the wharves — here is silver,
let me pass.”
[6]
Helen was seeking the “Master Mariner”; she does not find him, though her preliminary search leads finally to the “Master of Argo.”
Is this a dream
or was a lover waiting there?
I only know that I climbed
up a ladder or wooden stair,
I only know that I slipped
on the floating weed
near the edge — was it Simois’ river?
was it the sea?
it was a harbour, a bay or estuary;
I only know that I lay
on the salt grass and my hands
tore at the bitter stems
that cut me like adders’ tongues;
it was dark, I had not the power
to leap from the platform or wharf;
O, it was dark
so I lost my lover;
I slid on a broken rung
and my hand instinctively caught
at the skeleton-frame of the ladder
and I had not the strength to drown.
[7]
No, Helen can not escape from Troy through physical death. Now she is glad of her return, she is “happy to see the dawn.” She was saved for this, La Mort, L’Amour.
Whom did I seek?
whom did I think waited me there?
but I was not wanted,
no Old Man would ferry me out
to a craft, however old, however worn
and battered in foreign seas,
no one wanted me, Helena;
I am happy to see the dawn,
to remember the ladder
and the broken slat or rung
I forgot before;
remembering desolatio
n, I remember
that other stretch of sea-weed
and the fire; I remember
the hands that ringed my throat
and no moment’s doubt,
this is Love, this is Death,
this is my last Lover.
[8]
Indeed, the enchantment, the magic, at the time and equally in retrospect, is over-powering. It could not have been endured but “for her.” It was to Thetis that Helen prayed, on her first encounter with Achilles. Now the “eternal moment” returns and “we stare and stare over the smouldering embers.”
For her, it is clear,
(are you near, are you far),
for her, we are One,
not for each other,
for we stare and stare
over the smouldering embers,
and it is undecided yet,
whether Achilles turn and tear
the Circe, the enchantress,
the Hecate by the witches fire,
whether he snarl,
turned lion or panther
or another, wolf or bear;
they all seem to prowl around her
while she waits
and the circle grows smaller;
will what she invoked
destroy her?
nearer, nearer —
till I felt the touch
of his fingers’ remorseless steel …
for I have promised another
white throat to a goddess,
but not to our lady of Aulis.
Book Five
[1]
So they will always be centralized by a moment, “undecided yet.” Though La Mort, L’Amour will merge in the final illumination, there is this preliminary tension that can be symbolized by the “circle of god-like beasts.” The great “frieze, the Zodiac hieroglyph” comes to life with the magnetic intensity of these two. Forever, there is “the pad of paws on the sand … ”
Did he fear her more
than I could ever fear
the pad of paws on the sand,
the glare of eyes in the fire,
the lion or the crouching panther?
it almost seemed they were there,
the circle of god-like beasts,
familiars of Egypt;
would they turn and rend each other,
or form a frieze,
the Zodiac hieroglyph,
on a temple wall?
they are there forever, quiet
or slow to move
like their Guardians in heaven;
I might have counted them, twelve,
the outline of hero and beast,
or I might have counted seven
and seven, like the bars of light
that have slowly climbed up the wall;
I might have numbered them over,
I might have implored or invoked
the planets of the day,
the planets of the night.
[2]
Though there is the intense, almost unbearable excitement in this circle of “god-like beasts,” Helen does not invoke the power of lion or panther, wolf or bear. Undoubtedly, she is at one with them. She loves them, certainly, nor does she dismiss them. She is not afraid of them but she feels that Achilles is afraid of something. That fear creates the tension that he expresses in his attack, “are you Hecate? are you a witch?” Maybe. If so, she had already proved the invincibility of the “lure of the sea, Queen of Myrmidons, Regent of heaven and the star-zone.” So again, Helen “cried to one Daemon only, the goddess I knew from his eyes, was his mother, the sea-enchantment.”
But I did not entreat the twelve
nor the seven and the seven,
I cried to one Daemon only,
the goddess I knew from his eyes,
was his mother, the sea-enchantment;
did she harbour them there,
in the caves of the Mysteries,
when they wheeled and fell from heaven?
was it Thetis who herded the flock,
the two and the two, begotten
of light and of dark?
was it Thetis who lured him here,
in a battered ship with a mast
that measured the sky-space
and the space beneath the sky,
in the infinite depth of the sea
that she rules with the arc of heaven,
with day and night equally?
was it fate, was it destiny
that brought us together?
would we blaze out like a meteor?
would the blazing ember
sputter and fail and fall
or burn forever?
[3]
We have seen that Thetis, like Proteus, takes many forms. Nor will she neglect “the worshippers from the caves.” To each adept of darkness, it seems, she appoints a companion “from the circles of heaven.” Helen had asked of “the lion and the crouching panther,” if they would “turn and rend each other.” No. So, the assembled “host of spirits” form “the whole arc … the circle complete.”
Had it happened before?
it could not happen again,
not one, not the whole arc,
not the circle complete,
enclosing the day and the night;
under and through the sea
she had sought them out,
she had gathered the worshippers
from the caves, and the host of light
from the circles of heaven,
two and two, brothers and sons,
like my own twins, the Dioscuri;
a host of spirits crowded around the fire,
but I did not see them;
he could have named them all,
had he paused to remember,
but he was seared with an agony,
the question that has no answer.
[4]
There is a word. Helen has spoken it. “How did she know the word?” It may not seem a matter of great importance that in their first encounter, she “dared speak the name that made that of the goddess Jade,” but apparently, “a whisper, a breath” of which Helen, it seems, was unaware, had alarmed Achilles (“O child of Thetis”), provoked his attack and projected the first of the series’ or circle of the ever-recurring “eternal moment.”
How did she know the word,
the one word that would turn and bind
and blind him to any other?
he could name Helena
but the other he could not name;
she spoke of the goddess Isis,
and he answered her “Isis,”
but how did she know that her Thetis
(that followed immediately after
he repeated after her, “Isis”),
would brand on his forehead
that name, that the name
and the flame and the fire
would weld him to her
who spoke it, who thought it,
who stared through the fire,
who stood as if to withstand
the onslaught of fury and battle,
who stood unwavering but made
as if to dive down, unbroken,
undefeated in the tempest roar
and thunder, inviting mountains
of snow-clad foam-tipped
green walls of sea-water
to rise like ramparts about her,
walls to protect yet walls to dive under,
dive through and dive over;
how dared she speak the name
that made that of the goddess fade
or stiffen in painted folds
in a niche above an altar;
“pray, pray your vulture, your Isis,”
he seemed to say;
but there is one secret,
unpronounceable name,
a whisper, a breath,
two syllables, yes, like the Isis-name,
but broken, not quite the same,
breathed differently,
or spoken as
only one could speak,
stretched on a pallet,
numb with a memory,
or as a sleepless child,
crouched in the leaves
of Chiron’s cave.
[5]
What is this “simple magic” of a “ring of no worth, a broken oar” that finds more favour in the eyes of the “Regent of heaven” than the priceless treasure “from the uttermost seas”?
How did she know the name?
true, the world knew her,
she is carved on the harbour walls,
she is found on the lintel or set
in a niche under the eaves,
like a bird in a bird-nest,
a man will barter or filch
anything for the grains
left in an emptied sack
of incense-sticks or wait
to barter or share with another
scattered shreds of the sandal-bark,
a man will wait hours on the wharf
for some chance unexpected thing,