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

  gazing over the plain —yes—;

  if she waits as she waited

  day before yesterday,

  for ten heart-beats

  before the second gate —no—;

  what was the question

  to which she gave the answer

  with the measured fall of her feet,

  or her pause over the rampart

  that bridged the iron-gate?

  shall we strike as my legions had struck,

  first through the long fight,

  or shall we take second place

  and leave the Trojan’s fate to Odysseus?

  did the Command read backward?

  I stooped to fasten a greave

  that was loose at the ankle,

  when she turned; I stood

  indifferent to the rasp of metal,

  and her eyes met mine;

  you say, I could not see her eyes

  across the field of battle,

  I could not see their light

  shimmering as light on the changeable sea?

  all things would change but never

  the glance she exchanged with me.

  [4]

  The symbolic “veil ” to which Achilles had enigmatically referred now resolves itself down to the memory of a woman’s scarf, blowing in the winter-wind, one day before he had begun to tire of or distrust the original oracle of the purely masculine “iron-ring whom Death made stronger.” Does he blame Helen for luring him from the Command, which had evidently instructed him to follow Odysseus?

  We were an iron-ring

  whom Death made stronger,

  but when the arrow pierced my heel,

  they were not there;

  where were they? where was I

  and where was Troy?

  I seemed to know the whole,

  but as a story told long ago,

  forgotten and re-told;

  the Walls fell

  but it was a small matter,

  and Odysseus’ wanderings

  that had not yet happened,

  had happened long ago;

  only the salt air and a gull hovering

  seemed real, and an old sailor

  who greeted me as a lost stranger,

  resting his gnarled hands

  on the oars, where would you go?

  I did not know,

  I saw her scarf

  as the wind caught it,

  one winter day; I saw her hand

  through the transparent folds,

  and her wrist and her throat;

  but that was long ago,

  in the beginning,

  before I began to count

  and measure her foot-fall

  from turret to turret;

  if I remember the veil,

  I remember the Power

  that swayed Achilles;

  what had happened?

  was the Command

  a lure to destruction?

  [5]

  Is his reluctance to follow Odysseus or in any case “to take second place” even at the Command’s suggestion, the cause of his death? His after-life apparently, was not what he expected. Where was the circle of immortals to hail and acclaim him? Time values have altered, present is past, past is future. The whole heroic sequence is over, forgotten, re-lived, forgotten again. Only one thing is certain, the caravel, as Helen had first called the death-ship of Osiris. And as on his first meeting with her, there are still “the familiar stars.”

  I do not remember

  where or how I embarked,

  only the sound of the rowlocks

  as the old man ferried me out;

  he made for a strange ship

  that he called a caravel;

  if I had thought at all,

  I would have thought

  of a caravel as a small boat,

  but this had a mast;

  swaying across the night,

  I counted the flaming host

  of the familiar stars,

  the Bear and Orion’s belt,

  the Dragon, the glittering Chair;

  the mast measured them out,

  picture by picture,

  the outline of hero and beast

  grew clearer and clearer;

  their names were Greek —

  but a caravel?

  I puzzled …

  I found myself alone,

  where had the crew gone?

  [6]

  Now Achilles himself admits defeat. For what had he lost “the rule of the world and Greece”? For two things, “the turn of a Greek wrist” and “a ship’s mast that measured the stars.”

  I only remember the turn

  of a Greek wrist,

  knotting a scarf;

  I only remember

  the sway of a ship’s mast,

  that measured the stars;

  I only remember

  a struggle to free

  my feet from a tangle of cords,

  and a leap in the dark;

  I only remember

  the shells, whiter than bone

  on the ledge of a desolate beach;

  I only remember

  a broken strap

  that had lost Achilles

  the rule of the world and Greece;

  I only remember

  how I had questioned Command;

  for this weakness, this wavering,

  I was shot like an underling,

  like the least servant,

  following the last luggage-carts

  and the burdened beasts.

  [7]

  The Command or the adamant rule of the inner circle of the warrior caste was “bequest from the past.” Equally, each group or circle had its responsibility to the future. Had Achilles broken the connection of “the present to aeons to come”? Was this the punishment for his “game of prophecy”? Has he “lost in a game of chance”?

  The Command was bequest from the past,

  from father to son,

  the Command bound past to the present

  and the present to aeons to come,

  the Command was my father, my brother,

  my lover, my God;

  it was not the Command that betrayed,

  it was Another;

  She is stronger than God, they say,

  She is stronger than Fate

  and a chaffing greave,

  loose at the ankle,

  but is She stronger, I asked,

  stronger than Hercules?

  for I felt Herculean strength

  return when I saw Her face;

  I remembered my Power

  and the world that I had lost;

  was it a trivial thing

  to have bartered the world

  for a glance?

  but I had not bartered or bargained,

  I had lost

  in a game of chance.

  [8]

  It seems so. Achilles himself might be thought to lose stature by apology. Can he apologize? Or does he bargain, in a sense, play for time? Superficially now, they appear to accept second-best. Actually, they are both occupied with the thought of reconstruction, he “to re-claim the coast with the Pharos, the light-house,” she to establish or re-establish the ancient Mysteries.

  No— I spoke evil words,

  forget them, repeat them not;

  only answer my question,

  how are Helen in Egypt

  and Helen upon the ramparts,

  together yet separate?

  how have the paths met?

  how have the circles crossed?

  how phrase or how frame the problem?

  I, too, question and wonder

  though I am not rapt apart

  as you in this Amen-temple,

  and I am seldom here;

  while I work to re-claim the coast

  with the Pharos, the light-house,

  ask the oracle to declare,

  Helena, which was the dream,

  which was the ve
il of Cytheraea.

  Book Five

  [1]

  “How have the paths met?” This is indeed the lesser personal mystery. “The harpers will sing forever of how Achilles met Helen among the shades,” but perhaps they can not tell us why they met, for exactly what reason “the circles crossed.” This is part of the Greater Mystery. Helen will not force an answer from the oracle. She will take her time about it.

  No, I will not challenge

  the ancient Mystery,

  the Oracle; I will walk

  with measured step

  the length of the Porch,

  I will turn and walk back;

  I will count the tread of my feet,

  as a dancer counts,

  faster or slower,

  but never changing the beat,

  the rhythm; I will go

  from pillar to pillar,

  from stele to pillar;

  and round again to the river;

  here, there are iron-rings

  where the boats, in ancient times,

  made fast, but the Nile

  has changed its course;

  only the temple-lake

  contains the holy water;

  it is enough; it was long ago

  that the ships swayed here by the wharf;

  it is stone and heavily built;

  it was built to last forever.

  [2]

  But in the meantime, she goes on examining the “pictures”; there is the boat again, a symbol of the death-ship that had brought Achilles to her. There is the death-dealing dragon or Typhon-serpent, “reared to attack,” Achilles and herself, “crowned with the helm of defence.” Mutually, they would have destroyed each other, but for “the wisdom of Thoth.”

  So the pictures will never fade,

  while one neophyte is left

  to wonder again at the boat,

  to relate the graven line

  to a fact, graven in memory;

  so in the Book of Thoth,

  the serpent, reared to attack,

  is Achilles’ spring in the dark;

  so the Goddess with vulture-helmet

  is myself defenceless,

  yet crowned with the helm of defence;

  he had lost and I had lost utterly,

  but for the wisdom of Thoth;

  Amen-Thoth held the balance

  as it swayed, till it steadied itself

  with the weight of feather with feather;

  it was Fate, it was Destiny,

  as a magnet draws ore from a rock.

  [3]

  We are back now with our first meeting of Helen, in the Great Temple, when she says, “Amen (or Zeus we call him) brought me here” So recalling this Father, she remembers as on that first occasion, her “twin-brothers and Clytaemnestra, shadow of us all.” It is as if Helen wanted to recall her immediate “family” as protection or balance against the overwhelming fact of her Fate or Destiny, this meeting with Achilles.

  I am not happy without her,

  Clytaemnestra, my sister;

  as I turn by the last pillar,

  I find Isis with Nephthys,

  the Child’s other mother;

  the two are inseparable

  as substance and shadow,

  as shadow and substance are;

  is she Nemesis or Astarte,

  or Nepenthe, forgetfulness?

  I would change my place for hers,

  wherever she is, O Father,

  why should Helen be given

  peace through eternity,

  and Clytaemnestra doomed,

  and slain by her son, Orestes?

  or is it a story told,

  a shadow of a shadow,

  has it ever happened,

  or is it yet to come?

  do I myself invent

  this tale of my sister’s fate?

  Hermione, my child,

  and Iphigenia, her child, are one.

  [4]

  She re-tells a story that may still be in the future, as Achilles remembers “Odysseus’ wanderings that had not yet happened.” Actually, Pylades did not marry Iphigenia, but Electra, the older sister of Orestes.

  I do not know when or whether

  in time or in timeless-time

  Orestes married my daughter;

  was it before his flight

  from the Furies, or after,

  when he returned to life,

  re-claimed at Athene’s altar;

  I do not know when or whether

  Pylades and Iphigenia

  were bound with the bridal wreaths;

  but these re-tell the story,

  repeat the picture

  of Clytaemnestra and Helen,

  Agamemnon and Menelaus;

  but they are at one, not lost,

  half, part of the tale of Troy,

  half, bound to the Dioscuri;

  twin-sisters of twin-brothers,

  half of our life was given

  to another hierarchy;

  our children were children

  of the Lords of the world and Troy,

  but our birthright bound us to another dynasty,

  other than Trojans and Greeks.

  [5]

  Why does Helen recall Iphigenia? Does she identify herself with her sister’s child? Does she feel that she, like Iphigenia, was “a pledge to Death” and that like Iphigenia, she had been rescued at the last moment? She reminds us that Iphigenia was summoned to Aulis, on the pretext of a marriage to Achilles.

  I will call my sister Nepenthe,

  forgetfulness of the past,

  remembrance of childhood together;

  what did she care for the trumpet,

  the herald’s cry at the gate,

  war is over;

  it is true she lay with her lover,

  but she could never forget

  the glint of steel at the throat

  of her child on the altar;

  Artemis snatched away

  the proffered sacrifice,

  but not even Artemis could veil

  that terrible moment,

  could make Clytaemnestra forget

  the lure, the deception, the lie

  that had brought her to Aulis;

  “we will pledge, forsooth, our dearest child

  to the greatest hero in Greece;

  bring her here

  to join hand with hand

  in the bridal pledge at the altar”;

  but the pledge was a pledge to Death,

  to War and the armies of Greece.

  [6]

  By identifying Clytaemnestra with Iphigenia, “as one before the altar” it seems as if Helen were trying to re-instate her or dismiss her tragic story. It is as if Helen were re-living her own story and visualizing her own fate in terms of that of her twin-sister. Helen has been so signally favoured. She would recall Clytaemnestra and “remembrance of childhood together.”

  She was a bride, my sister,

  with a bride’s innocence,

  she was a lover of flowers

  and she wound in her hair,

  the same simple weeds

  that Iphigenia wore;

  she stepped forward,

  they stood together

  as one, before the altar;

  O Word of the Goddess,

  O Harmony and Grace,

  it was a moment

  of infinite beauty,

  but a war-Lord

  blighted that peace.

  [7]

  Does Helen feel that it was her sister’s consummation in-time that had led to disaster? Is she contrasting her sister’s husband, “her first lover,” with her own? Does she possibly feel that her desertion of Menelaus is comparable to her sister’s murder of Agamemnon? Do they share Nemesis together?

  Her last lover was nothing,

  only support and stay

  through the long days;

  she was glad

  when she drew the glaive

  from
the heart of her first lover;

  she was glad when her son

  stayed his hand,

  to hear herself say,

  remember Iphigenia;

  she was glad to get away;

  but where is she,

  my sister, Nepenthe?

  where is Nemesis?

  where is Astarte?

  [8]

  Helen compares Clytaemnestra and Iphigenia to “one swan and one cygnet.” Their divinity is stronger than all the material forces gathered against them. They must forget the war and its consequences — but no, there is this yet, unresolved — without war, there would have been no Achilles, no “Star in the night.”

  Have you ever seen a swan,

  when you threaten its nest —

  two swans, but she was alone,

  who was never alone;

  the wings of an angry swan

  can compass the earth,

  can drive the demons

  back to Tartarus,

  can measure heaven in their span;