From: eric@npri6.npri.com (Eric Williams)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Hecuba to Hecate (long)
Date: 30 Aug 92 13:22:03 GMT
Organization: NPRI, Alexandria VA

Hecuba to Hecate
----------------

1.
Mother of all worlds, thrice-reflected goddess,
Permit me a confidence before this old woman--
	Splintered, harped-out, haggard bent soul--
Teeters down the narrow headland path and leaps
Into Poseidon's cesspool.
		After that,
		I will join you,
Steps down, in Tartarus,
Minus this bone-whelk of a body.
I am Hecuba,
Last whittled empress of the Lunar Rule,
	The Menstrual Age,
Wise, idyllic time when you, our Solitary Goddess,
Blazed in the heavens and burned in the ashes.
Mother's milk of times when woman governed man,
And man kept mum while dressing, primping,
Posing on his pyre in a sacrificial shroud.
Those days before this history-mangling war--
	Before the iron tendencies of Zeus
		And Apollo,
Before Olympic ascendency--
Those days were practical, pleasant, empyrean...
Now the blade (man-forged) has split the peace,
Has hacked it into bloody pieces.
The One's divided, and from her comes
Him and Her and Him, the Many,
A rancorous chorus with all the discords
	Of the mortal sexes.

2.
How dare I divine this legacy?
My family line--five Trojans deep,
	A generation for every thrust
	On redoubtable Troy--
Dictated a secret to its daughters,
A certain gift,
Whereby they could (with shuttered eyelids)
Pause and clarify time's wreckage--
	The past, the present and the prescient.
Within that opalescing globe
I've seen soft, supple virgins bathing,
		river-doused,
Emerging mothers.
		In the legendary past,
Men played no part in seeding race...
Priapus chastely pruned his pears
While nymphs on fetid, cumbent boughs
Slumbered safely in his bosk.
However, the woman who sought a child
	Could wade into the nimble stream
	Or bare her breasts to the fertile wind
	Or eat some beans, and soon enough
Her belly swelled.
		Men were docile, dutiful toys
To excite, expend and execute;
But they were sly, and they scraped up
	Hereditary evidence
Within a scion's gaze and gait
That clinched their co-creatorship.
They wooed our sympathies with praise,
Entreated us, "Stay one more year
That messy rite, that honored knell," and we caved in
	To our eternal disrepute.

3.
I know you do not comprehend
	My secular orations,
So when my scribbling is complete,
I'll furl this tattered scroll and stumble
Pox-limbed to the village temple,
There to transfer ink to fire,
	Parchment to pyrolatry,
To beg the brazier to translate
Frantic strokes to smoky speech.
All things burnt and crisped by flames,
	Extinguished by volcanic heat,
Revive in crematory tongues,
The crackling cackles Erinyes spew.
Thus I sense you've just received
Reports of Troy and how we thrived,
And how the rude, unlaundered Greeks
Despoiled our treasure.
		Do not believe
The tales Ulysses brings to Hades--
	Turgid, inflated, chest-pounding pap...
Nobody fought for the beauty of Helen,
No, not at all. The beauty, the prize
Was the City Herself
And the fair tribe within her.
		Allow me, dear Goddess,
To root out this heinous misrepresentation.

4.
Ancient accounts contend that She
Was raised by a faction migrating from Crete
Who wandered far and camped upon
The plain beside the sea.
		Famine ravaged everywhere:
A mousetailed army marched down from the hills
And gnawed at the newcomers' leather straps.
Scamander received this propitiously,
Thus Troy was founded. 
		Soon after Her birth,
An object fell from the clear night sky
And planted itself beside a tent.
This became our Palladium;
Prophesies linked its welfare to Hers,
And custody granted invincible strength,
So Trojans believed.
		We took up trades
Befitting the gatekeepers of the Straits.
We were merchants of cinnabar,
Gold, silver, timber; we erected buildings
Of ruddy marble, a vascular stone
That bled bright crimson in the rain.
My husband and I jointly led the High Council
For thirty years, and throughout our marriage
	I loved him as much as I could any man.
I belonged to the house of the royal jade carvers,
Trustees of the sacred Palladium;
Priam rose through the ranks of the infantry
To achieve the post of commander-in-chief.
We reared nineteen sons and twelve hardy daughters,
And steered our way through two halcyon decades
Until a foul wind blew our frigate apart
And scattered the crew on peripheral shores.

5.
O how I hate, how I hate this town.
	Ulysses thought that stranding me 
Upon this rural Thracian tract
Would shut me up, but I rebelled.
A friend of his, a magistrate
Who rules this goat-manured patch,
Agreed to house me if helped
Instruct his daughters.
		I complied
But padded drills with grim asides
Recounting Greek atrocities
And Mycenaean greed and guile.
	Some days I paced the dusty streets,
Cursed into huts and raged at dogs,
Who whimpered, begged and barked at me.
Now I regret this vengeful tack
Against the simple canines here
As daily I grow more like them.
Even as I scratch these words,
	My fingers shrivel into stubs,
	Nails narrow, and my skin sweats out
	A dry white shag that curls and mats
	Beneath my gown.
		I have a cough
That grows more resonant each day,
Much like the one Cassandra caught
While locked within Troy's murky jail.
Her father Priam punished her,
	Gagged her at the first alarm,
	Hushed her vehement dissent,
Afraid her anti-bellum protests
(Labelled flagrant propaganda)
Would inflame the populace
To amputate their heads of state.
But we all could smell the truth
Venting from her prophet-organs,
	Fumes that stank like steaming sulphur
	In the Council's flaring nostrils.

6.
Let me cool my narrative:
The seed of trouble sprouted when
Priam longed to see again
Hesione, who six years prior
Eloped with an aristocrat
From Salamis.
	Aswoon in riches, she ignored
My husband's pleas to come back home,
So Priam sent a diplomat, our stout son Paris,
To wrest a writ from Agamemnon.
He set out in a light-hulled ship
Adorned with Aphrodite's bust,
And reached the ruler's sunbleached palace
	In record time.
But there he met with obstacles,
The usual bureaucratic fuss,
And stark celestial auguries.
While strolling down a bathhouse hall
He met the Mycenaean's brother.
King Menelaus kissed his cheek
And offered Paris unbounded welcome
To his native state of Sparta.
Giddy Paris used both hands
To clasp the King's and dropped his towel;
He pledged to come,
	For being errand-boy to Eros
	And trusting every whispered lie,
He had collected rumored intrigues,
	Indiscreet and sordid quips
Concerning Sparta's shameless queen.
Helen, moon-maid, tales alleged
Was radiant as that milky coal,
That heavened body, that stately lure
	Of moths and men;
And in the instant Paris touched
Her gabled gate, he felt her grip,
	Could not escape
Her cold, nocturnal gravity.
Helen drew him to her yard
Where she and sisters Clytaemnestra
	And Timandra
Acted out a brash seduction.
Without a warning, glance or sound,
All three disrobed, surrounded him,
As he swayed dumbstruck and erect.
"Now," said Helen, "choose among
These contours flanked by foliage...
Whose beauty equals Aphrodite's?
Whose surpasses? Make your choice,
Give her this apple, then your love."
Paris--not the strongest youth
When tempted by a pelvic urge--
	Crumbled vastly.
I'm certain Menelaus watched
Through cracks within the garden wall
And savored this divertissement.
He peered as through a broader breach
And glimpsed in Paris Troy's undoing:
	A cindered, cracked vermilion sky,
	The peristylar Fane ablaze,
	Nineteen eagled pillars razed,
	Artisans slain, red splashed on red,
	Stains that nauseate me now:
I yearn for vacuums of color and sound.
Menelaus arranged a trip
To Crete and passed along the word
He'd gone to honor Grandpapa.
He left his moony wife alone
With handsome guest and cellar full
	Of ripening wine.
These tawdry tactics he had planned
With Helen and the Equine States,
Who all subscribed with droolwet lips
To this most pungent mendacity.
Their aim: to plant in the enemy's bed
A spy (and obliquely) a pretext for war.
The lovers packed up with incredible haste,
Shacked up on a ship bound for Amathus,
Honeymooned in squalid Cyprian ports,
And long before we heard the news,
Agamemnon's envoys arrived in Troy.
	"A captive? What captive?" our Councilors raged,
And repeated their tiresome Trojan refrain:
	"Hesione is our core captive concern--
	Tell us when will Priam's sibling return?"
The Greeks filed out in a organized huff
While Priam ground his olive-flecked teeth,
And I--by staring at the sun--
Burned out projections of sex and slaughter.
Both sides raised taxes and fields of armies,
Hammered together their mighty fleets,
And announced great contests to build morale.
This sort of thing was Priam's game,
And Agamemnon's, and such men
Who said their war would be the last,
When in fact it was the first
To survive in the dress and dramatic dreck
	 Of pompous verse.
Though swiftly falling, I hardened to stone,
Too petrified to muster up
A shrill attack against their drums,
	Their shields, their pikes, their battleships...
I feigned agreement with their cause
Though I knew better: It's in their blood.

7.
Perhaps as a woman I am to blame:
	Those countless cyclic centuries
	Of punctual human sacrifice
Instill in victims a seasonal thirst
For murder on a grander scale.
But welcoming war at home's perverse;
Though brimming, our Treasury had dimensions,
	A roof and rafters, walls and worth,
And much of our stockpiled capital fed
Herds of mercenary valiants.
It's true, we purchased our allies (save one),
And Lycia adhered to us out of fear
	Of Greek domination.
Athens was neutral, as was Thebes,
But we suspected their tacit support
	Of Equine aggression.
Thus a sequence of savagery surged and clashed,
Mainly sea-battles for nine flotsam years,
Though initially rival boats disappeared...
	(We later learned the sorry state
	Of our opponents' seamanship;
	A tiny bit comic, is it not,
	That they have claimed naval mastery?)
Despite foes' errors, the beaming beacon
Of our purportedly infinite wealth
Beckoned poor potentates, destitute dynasts,
And brought to the Straits every barbarous ship,
Drew them up on our semi-precious sands
And strewed their planks on our churning waters.

8.
Today the sea is mercury-smooth,
And it sports a curious, queasy tint
	Of celadon and silver.
I ask Cassandra what all this means,
But she simply shrugs and peels an onion
As if daily life had dulled her edge.
Some say I'm confused, that the shepherd's niece
Prepares the food, that Cassandra lives
In another land, so sometimes I wonder
Aloud where she is.
		"Don't you know, Mother?"
She responds with a wink. "I've lost my head."
A cascade of laughter--her cynical trademark--
Dissolves her remark, and she holds up
The skinned white bulb
	As if it were a private moon.
	It must be her.
They feed me groats and grape leaves here--
Humble fare for the Trojan elite;
Perhaps we were haughty, but in our City
	The courts banished hunger, instructed the Council
	To set aside grain for the commonweal,
	And judges reviewed the petitions of slaves
	As well as kings.
		Where else have strangers
	Felt at home in a public square,
	Due to our training the citizens
	Not to belittle the littlest nation
	Nor scoff at peculiarly vested legations.
I see my error clearly now:
While musing on the slopes of time
And noting great things tumbling down,
I forgot that my own universe
Was also part of that sinister slide.
I could have stopped him, that Ulysses--
	Vain, stump-statured, tricky man--
But I refrained, let him slip by,
As if a phantom came to take
A phantom-lantern out to sea;
Instead he stole my soul from me.

9.
Some crass announcements bellowed by
A chronicler of these contentious times:
	Paris and Helen make love amidst volleys!
	Iphigeneia succumbs to a stroke!
	Achilles rapes Troilus at the altar!
	Hector is dragged like a dog by the heels!
	Memnon adopts an arsonist's angle!
	Paris aims low and hobbles Achilles!
	Ajax pricks armpits and dies from infection!
	Paris is wounded, falls ill and expires!
	At obsequies, Hecuba shoulders her grief!
(How I should have told him
My numbness was fatal...)
Despite all the madness, the Greeks were defeated,
Or would have been routed, were it not for this:
Antenor, shucking his diplomat's robe,
Turned traitor, conspired with enemy vipers
To pilfer the sacred Palladium.
Ulysses divulged while en route to this village
That my son was fed up with Priam's clan,
Who called him the Whelp and the Not-Quite-a-Man.
He colluded and bargained for post-war power--
Undiluted dominion of Troy plus a share
	Of the Treasury's ingots.
With Antenor's maps in his purse, stooped Ulysses
Slogged and bumbled his way up the sewers,
The very same conduits through which small secrets
Flushed out by Helen tricked down to the Greeks.
His first stop: her boudoir, where Helen extorted
An imminent rescue.
		Just then I entered,
As was my habit, to see what mischief
The minx was concocting.
Ulysses pretended to be a slave--
Unconvincingly moaning and baring fake wounds--
A runaway wretch from an enemy camp
Whose location he could not precisely recall.
	Helen--improbably--vowed she'd adopt him.
Forget the absurdity of their excuse;
Even through filth I detected that rascal,
And I tipped on the verge of turning him in,
When I thought of a whimsical counter-plot.
I took him behind the guarded gates
And amphoraed alleys of the vault
Wherein the Palladium rested,
		extinct
And as cold as our future.
"Slave, now that you are part of Troy,"
I lectured him through veils of smiles,
"This is yours, too. Feel free to stay
And meditate on its graces a while."
I abandoned him and scurried off...
Predictably, when I returned,
The lifeless artifact had vanished.
Smug and conceited I sauntered down
The steps to where the real one lay
(I've found the public can't discern
A copy from the genuine)
And threw its velvet cover back.
	It, too, was gone.
		I theorize Diomedes
Had trailed Ulysses into Troy
And did the dirty work himself.
The rest is darkness, fire, fear.
The Greeks with energy renewed
Attacked, and from tall wooden towers
Which bore their league's crude horsehead seal,
Laid siege, laid waste and once within
The walls, laid out our citizens.
	I place within that harrowed number
	Priam's body,
	Headless, and now unredeemed.
I think that I have said enough.

10.
Early this morning I heard the snap
Of spiders' nets in the damp dew-light
As the neighbor's son passed my room on his way
To the asphodel-delighted fields.
	Remark his scythe.
I am alone and I am done;
I blink, and I'm transported to
The palisade, where the tremulous tide
Awaits my ultimate oblation.
One final vision:
	Somewhere far off in the yet-to-be
	I reawake high on the same rocky pier,
	Leaning forward, as if to jump...
	Below me a jumble of roofs descend
	To the gleaming water, and snaking down lanes
	Sunk in the village's fractured strata,
	Two stiff yellow beetles with glowing eyes
	Rumble and run toward the esplanade.
	As I bend over further and spill my wine,
	A pythonic arm wraps about my waist,
	Drags me back from the railing.
		I finger my choker
	(Black coral and pearls), give my husband a peck,
	And follow him in. The room rises and swirls
	With continual currents of conversation,
	And I plunge in the midst where the turbulence swells,
	While hands (mostly chilly, but gaining warmth)
	Float by and wave, caress my shoulders,
	Admire my figure, invite me in deeper
	To depths where sounds and sentiments ebb,
	Where I am consumed by the drumming of time.