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A Double Sorrow

Page 5

by Lavinia Greenlaw


  They sleep, she wakes

  I can withstand my father’s wishes but not the king’s.

  I have to go but believe me that I can contrive

  A way home. This will all die down

  And every day there’s more talk of peace.

  It’s half a day’s ride.

  Meanwhile I’ll send news somehow.

  I can be back in – what – ten days?

  IV. 1275–1330

  Ambiguities

  We’re not yet on firm ground

  Nor are we in deep water

  And as for my father

  I’ll persuade him the gods ordain my return

  By finding a way to turn it into gold.

  For now we’re neither here nor there

  So breathe.

  IV. 1394–1406

  From leaf to leaf

  He brings himself to believe her

  Because he loves her

  And both feel lighter.

  They turn to small things

  Like a pair of birds

  Who flit from spot to spot of sun

  And chirp of each green landing.

  IV. 1432–1435, IF IV. 138

  Fantasy

  He cannot escape her leaving and fears

  Her father’s sleight of hand

  And fine talk from handsome men.

  She will look back from among them

  And see him as uncouth.

  The city rough. She will not come home

  And the siege will never be broken.

  IV. 1470–1491

  He runs away with himself

  Why risk separation?

  What fool gives up their very being?

  Let’s steal ourselves away.

  We may lose reputation and betray

  The king but I have kin elsewhere.

  If we turned up in our bare shirts

  We’d still be honoured guests. We can afford this.

  IV. 1503–1526

  Shall she be cursed

  We would find ourselves too free.

  No. You must let me go. But believe this:

  The river that runs like an arrow

  Through our city and down to the sea

  Shall turn back upon its source

  Should I prove false. And by god and man

  and good and bad and beast shall I be cursed.

  IV. 1527–1554

  Ten days

  People would say it was not an act of love

  But one of fear and desire. We are at war.

  You would lose your honour and I my name.

  Stay here where I will be again

  By the time the moon has carried itself

  Out of the ram and into the lion.

  You are a prince: strong enough to endure.

  IV. 1555–1596

  Unquestionable

  Long after dawn they lie tight pressed.

  At last he makes himself dress

  All the while looking upon his lover

  As if upon his death.

  When he understands what is going to happen

  His spirit tears itself out of his chest.

  He leaves the room.

  IV. 1688–1701

  BOOK FIVE

  Circles

  The sun moves through its signs.

  The day of her departure comes. At dawn

  Diomede stands full ready to receive her.

  Why does Troilus not defy his father

  Abandon his brothers, kill this man and grab her?

  He answers himself that she might get hurt in the fray.

  He joins the crowd at the gate.

  V. 8–56

  The Greeks arrive to collect Criseyde

  Who would not trust her sadness?

  When Criseyde is ready to be gone

  She turns to Diomede as he takes her reins

  And says with great coldness:

  I have shown myself long enough.

  Let us not dwell.

  She bids her servants farewell

  Otherwise no one.

  V. 57–63, IF V. 8–9

  A courtesy

  Troilus is alongside.

  One among many.

  He raises a gloved fist

  On which sits a hooded hawk.

  They ride out beyond the valley at a slow walk.

  He would remain with her every step of the way

  But turn he must.

  V. 64–70

  He manages himself

  From among the Greeks comes Antenor.

  The Trojans cheer. The prince tries

  But he is fixed on she who is leaving.

  He takes her right hand in his right hand

  With great formality and whispers

  That she must hold to the tenth day or he will die.

  To the man taking her reins he says nothing.

  V. 71–87

  Diomede

  He observes the prince’s silence

  The lady’s grief, their barely touching hands

  And sees that there is something in this

  For him. He will drive out the other man.

  All he has to do is understand.

  Where the prince might sing to himself

  He reads her.

  V. 92–105

  So soon away

  They fall into conversation.

  He makes of her distress a question:

  Is there anything he can do that might

  Put her at ease? He interrogates

  The immediacy of his devotion

  So that she doesn’t. He will be her friend.

  She needs one.

  V. 100–140

  Diomede leads

  Enveloping

  He waits till her father’s tent is in sight

  Then says he can guess what weighs on her

  And that even those on opposite sides

  Worship at the same altar

  When it comes to love. He repeats his offer

  Then seals the conversation

  By pointing out her new home.

  V. 120–151

  They arrive at the Greek camp

  A bluff

  Then he turns and blurts about having never

  Met a woman who so pierced his heart

  Keeping his words abrupt

  As if this were sudden exposure.

  He presents his feelings as a shock:

  The discovery in himself of an outcrop

  Across which he now stumbles.

  V. 155–175

  Disappearance

  She has been sinking all the while

  And hears what he says from underwater.

  She catches some words – friendship, brother –

  And being who she is

  Thanks him as she slips from her horse

  And steps as a child

  Back into the house of her father.

  V. 176–194

  Inside the walls of himself

  No one dares speak to the prince

  On his return, his face set so hard

  Such anger in his manner.

  Alone at last he gives vent to the loss

  Of his happiness. He blames his fate, his birth

  All possible gods. He sees no worth

  In anything they’ve created beyond her.

  V. 197–210

  Troilus returns to the palace

  Where am I where she is?

  Where are her arms that last night were here?

  Where is her body where?

  Is this pillow all that’s left for me to embrace?

  How can I persevere?

  Who right now stands in her presence?

  To whom right now does she listen?

  Who will speak for me right now in my absence?

  V. 218–236

  A pale horizon

  There’s just the faintest line of day

  When he sends for his so-called brother

  Who swears he would have come before

  Had he not been detained
on palace business.

  He knows what to expect:

  The prince sleepless, his woe endless.

  The stars are still in the sky.

  V. 274–291

  At dawn Troilus summons Pandarus

  I shall not see tomorrow

  So let me tell you what I wish

  By way of burial and inscription.

  Do what you think best with my goods but of the pyre

  The feast and the funeral games

  Ensure that all is nobly done.

  Place the powder of my burnt heart

  In a gold urn and deliver it to her.

  V. 295–315

  Troilus makes arrangements

  A diversion

  We must drive these ten days ahead of us.

  This city is full of pleasure pots. I know a place

  Where every imaginable delicacy is served

  And where all pleasing instruments

  Are tuned to an ultimate sweetness.

  The air has never been so provoked.

  You will thrum like a plucked string.

  V. 393–48

  Pandarus attempts to restore Troilus

  After three days

  Troilus cannot stand to hear another tune.

  Every woman there has been told his story.

  He recites old letters as if they were prayers

  And imposes her form.

  He’s a locked room.

  They ride for home. He starts to sing.

  The key is elsewhere.

  V. 456–504

  As if in passing

  They find themselves below her window:

  Barred, tight shut. He feels a frost

  And rides off before anyone can see in his face

  That he is as this house

  Once the best of all possible places.

  Then he goes to the gates by which his life left

  And replays it.

  V. 525–607

  Himself imagined

  A loss of stature, a contorted face.

  Spoken of in whispers as he passes. He knows

  What they say: that he’s in the grip of the most

  Tremendous hope and dread.

  It looks to them like delusion.

  He hides his subject in verse.

  Long songs he sings to no one.

  V. 617–637

  With each day Troilus lessens

  Guarded

  Upon the other side remains Criseyde

  With few women, among many men.

  There is nothing to say to her father

  That will obtain her release. If she escapes

  She might be killed or raped and even if she made her way

  Home – no one would be pleased.

  Wouldn’t he have given up already?

  V. 687–706, IF VI. 1

  With each day Criseyde doubts herself more

  Out of all cure

  She gazes at the distant towers of the city.

  How quickly her life

  Has arranged itself in scenes

  Distant as memory.

  How to get back inside?

  She had thought it a fortress

  And so it is.

  V. 710–733

  In conclusion

  Before she is ready to act

  Someone will loosen the knot.

  The closed city and her estranged love

  Will pass through her mind

  Without catch

  Like the smoothest thread

  Through the eye of a needle.

  V. 750–770

  Criseyde decides to try to escape but

  Cast

  They will say that Diomede was robust

  And Troilus the very measure of a man. That Criseyde

  Was known to bind with golden thread

  The blonde braid that hung down her back.

  That she had no like, no lack

  Though much will be made of her sliding courage.

  No one is sure of her age.

  V. 799–840

  A branch about to bud

  He contrives to find her alone.

  She serves spice cakes and wine.

  When their conversation turns to the war

  He asks for her opinion

  And more: are Greek ways so foreign?

  And why has her father not found her a suitor?

  She doesn’t know what he means.

  V. 841–863

  Each day Diomede visits Criseyde

  He bursts into blossom

  Your father’s dreadful vision was so clear

  That when I heard he had a daughter

  I myself offered to bring you here

  And now I must urge you to empty your heart

  Of one who has no future.

  Do not waste one quarter of a single tear.

  The salt will only redden your lovely face.

  V. 897–917

  With these words he colours a little

  He turns away, pauses, rouses himself

  And looks straight at her as he speaks of

  The kingdom that would be his

  Had his father not been killed.

  He says everything that can be said:

  That there is a more perfect kind of love

  And that this is his first such promise.

  V. 918–940

  Each of his points is met

  I love the place where I was born.

  There are men there who are your equal.

  I pray things will not fall out as you predict.

  I do not doubt you’d serve a lady well.

  I had a husband who died

  Since when my heart has been a shell.

  Who does this lie protect?

  V. 955–978

  Criseyde omits

  So it happens

  I spend the time left to me in regret

  While you, a man, are free to act

  So let me at least say this:

  If I see what I never thought to see

  I might do what I never thought to do.

  I do not say I will give you my love

  And I do not say I will not.

  V. 988–1004

  Criseyde listens again

  Twilight

  All day they sit and when he rises to leave

  He cannot resist a little more talk.

  She knows him now a man made for women.

  He presses his case gently enough

  And when they part she gives him a glove

  Which she tells herself she does

  So as not to give him her hand.

  V. 1009–1015

  Rarely have the stars seemed so clear

  She stands beneath the rising moon

  As it leaves behind the sign of the lion.

  Who’s counting?

  From then on he speaks to her each day

  And what he says draws out her pain

  Bends her heart and turns her desire

  From Troy (so far away now, so close to its end).

  V. 1016–1036

  Since there is no other way

  Some say the Greek carried a pennant on his spear

  Which she had sewn from her sleeve.

  That he captured Troilus’s bay and gave it to her.

  That she gave it back but washed his wounds.

  That she gave up.

  No one’s sure how long it took her to succumb.

  If you’ve heard her name you know what she’s done.

  V. 1037–1069

  On the tenth day

  They climb the city walls to look for her coming.

  All manner of person who appears on the horizon

  Has to be her. Until they are not. He studies

  Each tree and grove and hedge, craning his neck.

  There she is at last!

  All his friend sees is a cart

  Being hauled from place to place.

  V. 1105–62

  Troilus and Pandarus go to meet Criseyde

 
Turning for home

  He decides she must be waiting for dark

  And then when every star is out

  That he has made a mistake.

  What she really meant was that she’d be back

  When the moon has passed beyond

  The sign of the ram – which is when?

  Next day up and down the walls again.

  V. 1165–1194

  Troilus reconfigures

  He has lost the thing that gave his life its frame

  Three, four, five, six days pass

  And each day he recovers her promise

  Only to feel it break again

  And desire rise through his pain

  And with it his tears.

  He flees from company, from comfort, from life

  As from fire.

  V. 1199–1218

  His manliness

  The shame is crippling.

  He uses a stick to stagger about

  Exhausted.

  The king, his mother, brothers and sisters

  Beg to know what’s wrong.

  He says he has a disease of the heart.

  A defect that will kill him.

 

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