Helen in Egypt: Poetry (New Directions Paperbook) Read online

  the simple magic coming

  from something lost or left over,

  or spilled like the ash-of-myrrh

  on the Paphos-temple floor,

  which a simple servant (no priestess)

  sweeps up to bring to another;

  Oh, yes, the world knows her name,

  the richer for poorer worshippers,

  for meaner offerings,

  a filigree ring of no worth,

  a broken oar, a snapped anchor-chain;

  why did they bring her these,

  when the whole world saw

  sea-chests from the uttermost seas,

  empty their priceless treasure

  on the Paphos-altar?

  [6]

  Perhaps it can not be defined. It is a “secret treasure” but Helen implies, as she counts “the seven and seven slats of the ladder or the bars of light on the wall,” that it could only be judged or assessed if “God would let me lie here forever.”

  It was a treasure beyond a treasure

  he gave her, no buckle

  detached from his gear,

  a trophy to prove to others,

  Achilles had loved her;

  no strip of leather,

  stained with the heat of battle,

  such as Briseis might show

  as proof to another,

  or Chryseis display forever,

  as a conqueror’s favour;

  what did he give her?

  it was nothing, nothing at all,

  and was this his anger,

  that something forgotten or lost,

  like the flint in his pouch

  (“I thought I had lost that”),

  was taken from him,

  and he only remembered it,

  remembered and wanted it back,

  when it was gone?

  that I only remembered and treasured

  the gift I forced from him,

  long after — is it seven years,

  is it a day? if only God

  would let me lie here forever,

  I could assess, weigh and value

  the secret treasure, as I count

  the seven and the seven slats of the ladder

  or the bars of light on the wall.

  [7]

  Chiron, the Centaur had trained most of the Greek heroes, outstanding among them, Achilles. So Helen recalls the scene of his boyhood and his childhood’s secret idol, the first Thetis-eidolon.

  He could thunder, entreat and command,

  and she would obey — that was natural,

  she was his mother;

  he could whisper, enchant and pray

  with flute-note or whistle bird-note

  on the reed-pipe that Chiron had made;

  but the Centaur had not wrought nor charmed

  nor conjured this thing

  that worked magic, always answering,

  always granting his wish or whim;

  he hid it in moss, in straw,

  in a hole in the cave-wall

  or in the tree by the cave-door,

  and stone by fitted stone,

  he built her an altar,

  it was far on the hill-crest

  but the other was always near,

  and the Centaur being a god,

  did not help him,

  nor try to find

  what filled the eyes of the child

  with terrible fire —

  fire of battle?

  fire of desire?

  [8]

  But with “the lure of war,” the hero forgot “the magic of little things,” and his mother’s “simple wish that he learn to rule a kingdom,” until in the end, “he paused to remember, but he was seared with an agony, the question that has no answer.”

  He knew the trick, the magic

  of little things, how the reapers

  brought his mother the gleanings

  and not the sheaves,

  but he had been lured from Scyros,

  where she hid her son,

  entreating the king to instruct him,

  as the Centaur Chiron had done,

  in the laws and the arts of peace;

  for none could reach the youth

  in the race, he so far out-paced

  the others, he seemed to run alone,

  and none could teach him anything

  of the ways of the bird or the beast,

  and none dared draw the bow

  where the young Achilles stood;

  his were Chiron’s arrows;

  hers was a simple wish

  that he learn to rule a kingdom,

  but he had forgotten Scyros,

  forgotten his vows of allegiance

  to the king, forgotten his marriage-vows

  to the king’s daughter;

  he had followed the lure of war,

  and there was never a braver,

  a better among the heroes,

  but he stared and stared

  through the smoke and the glowing embers,

  and wondered why he forgot

  and why he just now remembered.

  Book Six

  [1]

  There is the ultimate experience, La Mort, L’Amour. But Helen “in the new light of a new day,” fully realizes the price of that ultimate. Is the price too great? “The numberless tender kisses, the soft caresses” have no part in the epic. But there is a miraculous birth. The promised Euphorion is not one child but two. It is “the child in Chiron’s cave” and the ‘frail maiden,” stolen by Theseus from Sparta.

  I only saw him from the ramparts

  and on the desolate beach,

  and we talked apart in the temple;

  true, we followed a track in the sand

  though we spoke but little,

  and the absolute, final spark,

  the ember, the Star had no personal,

  intimate fervour; was it desire?

  it was Love, it was Death,

  but what followed before, what after?

  a thousand-thousand days,

  as many mysterious nights,

  and multiplied to infinity,

  the million personal things,

  things remembered, forgotten,

  remembered again, assembled

  and re-assembled in different order

  as thoughts and emotions,

  the sun and the seasons changed,

  and as the flower-leaves that drift

  from a tree were the numberless

  tender kisses, the soft caresses,

  given and received; none of these

  came into the story,

  it was epic, heroic and it was far

  from a basket a child upset

  and the spools that rolled to the floor;

  and if I think of a child of Achilles,

  it is not Pyrrhus, his son,

  they called Neoptolemus,

  nor any of all the host that claimed as father,

  the Myrmidon’s Lord and Leader,

  but the child in Chiron’s cave;

  and if I remember a child that stared

  at a stranger and the child’s name is Hermione,

  it is not Hermione

  I would stoop and shelter,

  remembering the touch on my shoulder,

  the enchanter’s power.

  [2]

  Helen had recalled “the fragrant bough,” when she thought of her childhood in Sparta. Now she thinks of “a sorcery even more potent,” that of the child Achilles. A tree holds the secret “that Thetis’ child hid away.”

  Paris is beautiful enchantment

  and enchantment lives

  in the tree he called Dendritis,

  while another tree,

  the tree before Chiron’s door,

  holds another secret,

  a sorcery even more potent,

  a wooden doll

  that Thetis’ child hid away;

  O mysterious treasure,

  O idol, O eidolon,
<
br />   with wings folded about her,

  her hands are clasped as in prayer,

  in the garment-fold;

  is she carved of red-cedar?

  only a child could follow

  the living grain of the tree,

  as if sap were rising within her,

  only a child or a master-hand

  could fit a crown or a cap

  from the rose-vein of the wood;

  he set her upon a plinth

  like the curved prow of a ship,

  and perhaps the tree is a ship

  and he sails away, but he forgot her,

  the charm, the eidolon,

  when his own mother came,

  and he forgot his mother

  when the heroes mocked

  at the half-god hidden in Scyros.

  [3]

  But what is “the living grain of the tree” and “the rose-vein of the wood” to “one brandished spear that enflames a thousand others”?

  Did she rise and fall

  like the ebb and flow of the sea?

  not she, her power was measureless,

  she could not fail,

  but could she understand?

  could a woman ever

  know what the heroes felt,

  what spurred them to war and battle,

  what fire charged them with fever?

  like the lightning-flash

  was the flash of their metal,

  the spark from their sword and steel;

  O spear of light,

  O torch of one brandished spear

  that enflames a thousand others,

  O light reflected from polished buckler

  and shield, a mirror to show the dead,

  we may not look upon,

  lest we pause and waver

  and question the chances of war;

  O glory of Pallas,

  O Gorgon-head,

  turn us not to stone, let us live to strike

  merciless strokes for the Flower

  that is Greece,

  her hearth-stone and altar;

  so the warriors spoke,

  so the warriors lured him out;

  what can a woman know

  of man’s passion and birthright?

  [4]

  True, he forgot her and that is where her power lay. Was not his own mother more desirable than the “wooden doll” he had made to represent her? The prophecy of Achilles’ fame could only be fulfilled if he died in battle. So “his own mother came” and Thetis “hid him in Scyros.” But the heroes found him and “mocked,” and that was the end of Thetis’ plan for her son’s inheritance of the island-kingdom. But “a sorcery even more potent” was to claim him in the end.

  Paris said she was poor,

  when she walked (as he said I walked)

  to the door; they were rich

  in their battle array,

  their gold and their silver;

  true, they emptied their sea-chests

  and coffers upon the Paphian’s altar,

  but there was another Love,

  another Love’s mother,

  secret, hidden away under Achilles’ armour;

  he lost his arms, his famous shield,

  when Patroclus fell, but Thetis

  entreated Hephaestus to forge again,

  another helmet and greaves

  with sword and sword-belt and buckler,

  but she left him defenceless;

  he could name the heroes who lived,

  who died in a just defence

  of a cause, he was blameless

  like all the rest,

  like Agamemnon and Menelaus;

  she fought for the Greeks, they said,

  Achilles’ mother, but Thetis mourned

  like Hecuba, for Hector dead.

  [5]

  What was that sorcery or magic? It can only be defined by the most abstruse hieroglyphs or the most simple memories. All between, Helen seems to tell us is “nothing, nothing at all.” But there is something between. There is the old problem, “how reconcile Trojan and Greek?” In the beginning of this sequence, the voices of Achilles and Paris seemed to argue, unreconciled. Helen woke to struggle with the problem, in the human dimension, “my mind goes on, spinning the infinite thread.” Helen is “awake, no trance.” In a trance, “on the gold-burning sands of Egypt,” she may have solved the problem. And Theseus, wholly intellectual and inspirational, resolved it with his “all myth, the one reality dwells here.” But Helen says, “did I challenge the Fates when I said to Theseus, ‘the Wheel is still’?”

  Was it nothing, nothing at all,

  I asked when I heard Paris say,

  “call on Thetis, the sea-mother”;

  but why was it Paris who spoke?

  and why did I call him back?

  what formula did I plot,

  like an old enchanter?

  how reconcile Trojan and Greek?

  my mind goes over the problem,

  round and round like the chariot-wheel;

  did I challenge the Fates

  when I said to Theseus,

  “the Wheel is still”?

  my mind goes on,

  spinning the infinite thread;

  surely, I crossed the threshold,

  I passed through the temple-gate,

  I crossed a frontier and stepped

  on the gold-burning sands of Egypt;

  then why do I lie here and wonder,

  and try to unravel the tangle

  that no man can ever un-knot?

  I was quiet, I slept, then a fever

  ravaged my heart and my thought;

  who after all, is Paris?

  why did he say, “call on Thetis”?

  they are centuries, worlds apart.

  [6]

  It is not so simple. Helen seems to wish to return to an easier “formula.” But the “sea-mother,” whether we call her Thetis, Isis or Aphrodite, mourns “for Hector dead.” On our first meeting with Helen, in the Amen-temple, she recalls “the glory and the beauty of the ships.” These were Greek ships. In this last phase or mood, it seems inevitable and perhaps wholly human for Helen to turn on her Trojan lover, “what can Paris know of the sea?”

  What can Paris know of the sea,

  except for the lure and delight

  of the sheltered harbours and bays?

  what can Paris know of the sea?

  he crossed to Sparta, you say,

  but the Paphian lightened his craft

  and stilled the waves;

  what can Paris know of the sea

  that Thetis should champion him?

  how dared he say to me,

  “call on Thetis, the sea-mother”?

  I tremble, I feel the same

  anger and sudden terror,

  that I sensed Achilles felt,

  when I named his mother;

  true, the world knows her name,

  the world may bring her

  marble to build her walls,

  and ships for her harbours;

  but her wings are folded about her

  and her wings only un-furl

  at the cry of the New Mortal,

  or the child’s pitiful call;

  what had Paris to give her?

  [7]

  Helen returns to the two voices and again, almost grudgingly it seems, contrasts them. She had not known Paris in Egypt, but she had said, “Pans is beautiful enchantment,” and at the last, “Paris before Egypt, Paris after, is Eros.” L’Amour? Yet there is no refutation of her final decision or choice, “there is no before and no after, there is one finite moment.” Is this the “eternal moment” of her constant preoccupation, La Mort?

  Is it death to stay in Egypt?

  is it death to stay here,

  in a trance, following a dream?

  Achilles said, a catafalque, a bier,

  Paris said, call on Thetis;

  what had Paris to give her?

  it lies at
her feet

  with torn nets and the spears,

  the fishing-nets and the chariot-staves,

  mixed offerings of rich and poor,

  of peace and of war;

  I see the pitiful heap of little things,

  the mountain of monstrous gear,

  then both vanish, there is nothing,

  nothing at all, a single arrow;

  what had Paris to give her, or Eros?

  for even the aim of Achilles

  was not so sure, his bow so taut,

  and even the arrow of Chiron

  might sometime fail the mark,

  but this one, never.

  [8]

  One greater than Helen must answer, though perhaps we do not wholly understand the significance of the Message.

  Paris before Egypt, Paris after,

  is Eros, even as Thetis,

  the sea-mother, is Paphos;

  so the dart of Love

  is the dart of Death,

  and the secret is no secret;

  the simple path

  refutes at last