Helen, bright accompaniment,
accouterment of war as sure as all
the polished swords of princes groomed to lie
in mausoleums all eternity ...
The price of love is not so high
as never to have loved once in the dark
beyond foreseeing. Now, as dawn gleams pale
upon small wind-fanned waves, amid white sails ...
Now all that war entails becomes as small,
as though receding. Paris in your arms
was never yours, nor were you his at all.
And should gods call
in numberless strange voices, should you hear,
still what would be the difference? Men must die
to be remembered. Fame, the shrillest cry,
leaves all the world dismembered.
Hold him, lie,
tell many pleasant tales of lips and thighs;
enthrall him with your sweetness, till the pall
and ash lie cold upon him.
Is this all? You saw fear in his eyes, and now they dim
with fear’s remembrance. Love, the fiercest cry,
becomes gasped sighs in his once-gallant hymn
of dreamed “salvation.” Still, you do not care
because you have this moment, and no man
can touch you as he can, and when he’s gone
there will be other men to look upon
your beauty, and have done.
Smile—woebegone, pale, haggard. Will the tales
paint this—your final portrait? Can the stars
find any strange alignments, Zodiacs,
to spell, or unspell, what held beauty lacks?
Michael R. Burch is the editor of The HyperTexts, on-line at www.thehypertexts.com, where he has published hundreds of poets over the past three decades. Burch is one of the world’s most-published poets, with over 9,000 publications including poems that have gone viral but not self-published poems. His poetry has been published by hundreds of literary journals, taught in high schools and colleges, translated into 19 languages, incorporated into three plays and four operas, and set to music, from swamp blues to classical, by 31 composers.
Read more of Michael’s poetry here.
It's always a good sign when a poem demands to be read aloud 'to get the beauty of it hot'. And yet it's also full of clever little touches which don't distract from the whole but add to it. Double entendres that turn out to be quite different in meaning when you follow through to the next line. Including one that is sexually ambivalent. And the skillful use of internal rhyme, including one three syllable rhyme which was positively breathtaking.
It's amazing just how relevant and timeless and touching this poem is right now. These lines alone, regarding a great love, a great passion, that seems heightened by an awareness of the sad fate that awaits it, speak volumes about the inevitable ongoing consequences of warfare - especially for women:
Hold him, lie,
tell many pleasant tales of lips and thighs;
enthrall him with your sweetness, till the pall
and ash lie cold upon him.
A real tour-de force! Well done, Michael.