Between the hero’s going and the god’s coming
She paced a flinty shore, her windflower feet
Shredded and bleeding, but the flesh was numb
Or the mind too delirious to heed
Its whimpers. From the shore she vainly dredged
The deep horizon with a streaming eye,
And her strained ears like seashells only fetched
A pure pale blare of distance. Listlessly
She turned inland. Berries on bushes there
Watched her like feral eyes: she was alone:
The darkening thicket seemed a monster’s fur,
And thorn trees writhed into a threat of horns.
She walks a knife-edge here, between the woe
Of what is gone and what will never go.
O many-mooded One, you with the bared
Horizons in your eye, death in your womb,
Who draw the mariner down to a choked bed
And write his name upon an empty tomb –
Strangle him! Flay the flesh from his dishonoured
Bones, and kiss out his eyes with limpets! – No,
Drown my words! Who is the faithless now? Those eyes
Were true, my love. Last night, beside the myrtle,
You said ‘For ever’, and I saw the stars
Over your head, and then the stars were lost in
The flare and deluge of my body’s dawn.
False dawn. I awoke. Still dark. Your print upon me
Warm still. A wind, chilling my nakedness,
Lisped with the sound of oars. It was too dark
To see the wake of your bold, scuttling ship,
Or I’d have reeled you back on that white line,
As once … Is it because I saved you then
That you run from me as from a place accursed?
What is it in the bushes frightens me so?
A hide for nothing human. Coalfire eyes
Penning me on the beach. You had a kingdom
In your eyes. When you looked at me with love,
Were you only seeing a way to it through me?
I am a girl, unversed in the logic of heroes –
But why bring me so far, rescuing me
From my father’s rage, to leave me on this island
For the wild beasts? leave me like a forgotten
Parcel, or a piece of litter you had no time
To bury when you had used it under the myrtle?
Already a star shows. It is a day, an age
Since we came here. Oh, solitude’s the place
Where time congeals and memories run wild.
I put the ball of thread into your hands.
It is my own heartstrings I am paying out
As you go down the tunnel. I live with you
Through the whole echoing labyrinth, and die
At each blind corner. Now you have come back with
A bloody sword, a conqueror’s tired smile.
For you, the accustomed victory: for me,
Exultation, miracle, consummation.
Embracing you, the steel between us, I took
That blood upon myself, sealing our bond
Irrevocably with a smear of blood,
Forgetting that a curse lifted falls elsewhere
And weighs the heavier, forgetting whose blood it was.
Did you hear my mother’s willing, harsh outcry
Under the bull, last night? and shrink from your
Accomplice in the hot act, remembering
Whose daughter she is and whose unnatural son
She helped you butcher in the labyrinth?
I was a royal child, delicately nurtured,
Not to be told what happened once a year
Beneath the mosaic floor, while the court musicians
Played louder and my father’s face went still
As a bird listening for worms. But the maids gossiped;
And one day, when I was older, he explained –
Something about war crimes, lawful deterrents,
Just compensation for a proved atrocity.
It seemed nothing to do with flesh and blood,
The way he talked. Men have this knack for embalming
And burying outraged flesh in sleek abstractions.
Have you, too, found already a form of words
To legitimize the murdering of our love?
Ah well, I was not guiltless – never a thought for
The writhing give-and-take of those reparations
Until, with the last consignment of living meat
To be fed to the man-bull in the maze, you came.
You with the lion look among that huddle
Of shivering whelps – I watched you from the gate-tower
And trembled, not in pity, but afraid
For my own world’s foundations. When our hands
Touched at the State Reception, I knew myself
A traitor, wishing that world away, and found
My woman’s heart – sly, timorous, dangerous creature,
Docile but to the regent of her blood,
Despising the complexities men build
To cage or to hush up the brute within.
What were parents and kingdom then? or that
Poor muzzled freak in the labyrinth, my brother?
– Forgotten all. Forgetfulness, they say,
Is the gods’ timeliest blessing or heaviest curse.
A bundle of fear and shame, too much remembering,
I lie, alone, upon this haunted isle.
A victim for a victim is the law.
Is there no champion strong enough to break
That iron succession? Listen! What is this word
The bushes are whispering to the offshore breeze?
‘Forget’? No. Tell me again. ‘Forgive.’ A soft word.
I’ll try it on my tongue. Forgive. Forgive …
How strangely it lightens a bedevilled heart!
Come out of the thorn thicket, you, my brother,
My brother’s ghost! Forgive the clue, the sword!
Forgive my fear of you! Dead, piteous monster,
You did not will the hungry maze, the horns,
The slaughter of the innocents. Come, lay
Your muzzle on my forsaken breast, and let us
Comfort each other. There shall be no more blood,
No more blood. Our lonely isle expands
Into a legend where all can dream away
Their crimes and wounds, all victims learn from us
How to redeem the Will that made them so.
So on the dark shore, between death and birth,
Clasping a ghost for comfort, the girl slept.
Gently the night breeze bore across that firth
Her last, relinquishing sob: like tears unwept,
Windflowers trembled in the eye of night
Under the myrtle. Absence whirred no more
Within her dreamless head, no victim cried
Revenge, no brute fawned on its conqueror.
At dawn, far off, another promise broken,
The hero’s black sail brought his father death.
But on that island a pale girl, awoken
By more than sunlight, drew her quick, first breath
Of immortality, seeing the god bend down
And offer a hoop of stars, her bridal crown.