HELEN.

Note. This I wrote aged 20. I had the idea of writing newspaper reports about historical or mythical figures, then one paragraph in, realised that with a few small changes it was rhyming verse, so carried on like that. I didn’t perform this till I was 36, when I found my feet again as a performer, having lost them at some point. Then I performed in a long red dress given to me by my performance mentor Josephine Larsen. I’ve performed this poem at the Globe theatre in that dress; (not on the main stage yet.) Nowadays I perform not in drag, leaving the femininity of Helen to the audience’s imagination. Once I performed this to some friends at home. Just after it finished, someone said, ‘I wonder what Helen was really like.’ At that instant the lights went out and there was a blast of thunder right over the house; Alice saw a lightning ball go spinning down the lane.

I went out with this decent bloke

For fifteen years. I almost choke

With sobs now when I think of how

I left him. What a stupid cow

I am at times. I had it all,

Servants at my beck and call,

Security, security,

And all, if I was good for free.

Alas! But doesn’t every lass

With looks that sexually harass

The passers-by - like me I mean -

Who could confuse a tv screen

By winking at it, sometimes dream?

Security was an ice-cream

On top of mints and Quality Streets

And trolley-fulls of other sweets.

A foreigner who owned a boat

Came visiting. I liked his coat,

Especially when he laid it down

On puddles. ‘If a toe should drown,’

He said, ‘may all my tankers sink.’

I really should have stopped to think,

But all my canniness went slack,

Seeing my footprints on his back.

‘I’ve seen them all, Venus, Diana,’

He said, and jingled the piano,

‘And Juno too, but you’re the best.’

The sun was crisping in the west.

The world that he described to me

Was like an undiscovered sea,

And I was like a sunken treasure,

Imprisoned at Poseidon’s pleasure.

Desperate, enterprising man,

He was a bowshot of his own

Into my dark, when I was sick

Of walking in the daylight. Quick

As a shark he kissed me radically.

Do all disasters happen so quickly?

I’d need to tell you all I am

To tell you why I ran from home.

And that, young man, I don’t intend.

Go and find yourself a friend

With friends, and you will shortly find

How much you can unload your mind,

And how to whom. Do not look here

For eloquence inspired by fear

Of being misunderstood or forgotten:

All but my wit is dead and rotten.

‘His place’ was an ancient city,

Well defended if not very pretty.

Everyone there was very refined,

Slightly on edge but terribly kind

To me. I was what the black sheep had brought home,

And they struggled to think that some good would come

Of his blunder. Until, with a tightening of lips,

They saw the horizon covered with ships.

They certainly rallied, you can’t say they didn’t,

They never asked whether they should or they shouldn’t.

I walked wide-eyed on the castle wall,

Watching them charge and ripple and fall,

And come back to me, some cutting and bloody,

But most of them thankful and quiet and moody.

My lover changed. He became a dedicated

Bridegroom of battle, which was something I hated.

I might as well have been a duster

Freshening the King’s bedchamber.

Out on the plain, broad and divided,

The knights, like flying snails, collided,

Forming one oozing, splintered animal,

Now shuddering and huge, now smaller, now small,

As each side extricates - and then,

A shadow on the ground, of men.

The sound of bugles in the air,

And coloured plumes are flying. Fair

Is the only word that comes to mind

To those made tired and almost blind

By the singularly single sun

At noon, that does what it has done

For aeons, shines. Let us not go

To watch them riding out below.

I was a duster loved by dust

For ten years. And it seems I must

Draw them out here, if only because

Then I was a sieve to the cause,

Unable to hold their about-to-die eyes

With calm and a blessing, banish surprise

And fill my heart with a sacrificed life -

Well look at me, how did I do as a wife?

Or did I do well? They continued to die

For a decade for the look in my eye.

My reasonable husband became a villain,

A monster lashing the walls in vain.

My lover took to poetry

And called civilisation a pollarded tree

That weeps its many gashes dry.

I gave confusion back to the sky

And left one night, in the seventh year

Of the siege, when like a steel tear

The thin moon hung, and skipped across

The battlefield, not at a loss

Though no one was there to appreciate me.

I knew the shadows would agree

With the way I felt, the violent shapes

Like murderers hidden in sable capes.

And danced before the Grecian fires,

Catching their eyes between the spires

Of flame, and letting them go,

And looking where the moon burned slow

Or wrinkled in the rising heat,

Remaining, while my feathered feet

Courted like doves, and heard them groan

And belch, and wandered home alone.

‘Doll, do you love me?’ my partner said,

One afternoon as we lay in bed.

To do this enormous question justice,

I thought at length. A single kiss

Might have sufficed. But with a creak

Of springs he left before I could speak.

Gradually the monstrously sane

Man outside seemed the better man.

Not long ago but far too late

Your rich protector said to me

(I won’t call him your father yet,

To keep the sense of mystery,)

‘Helen, the monument to us

Is us. Who gives a tinker’s cuss

For what they say, if what they see

Is unimaginable matrimony?

‘But Helen, are your children mine?

What will men say when we have gone?

If your answer is just ‘Yes’,

Then let us die and let them guess

By looking at our double tomb

That I was doubled in your womb.

But if it is forever ‘No’,

Then Helen, Helen, please say so.

‘Nothing will change. United by

Hiding our knowledge of this lie,

We two will live until we die

Forgiving, you my question, I

Your answer, until loss of speech

Makes each eternally trust each.’

Nothing is whole. There is no ear

For my reply to hide in here.

Thank God we cannot see what might

Have been. Our foresight would take fright

And shelter in a smaller shell

Than it already does. Oh well.

Perhaps I might have seen the eyes

That might have given me replies

To questions of the heart. I remain

The tomb of many unburied men.

One more lie before you sleep

To gild your minds and make them shine,

My darlings, as the countless sheep

Of sleepless sinners pass in line.

At noon the clinkered horse’s tail

Was to the sea, as the last sail

Fell brightly out of sight. Goodbye!

Our bravest met the horse’s eye

From dunetops, while the tearful tide

Entered the shapes the ships had made

In the sand, and a million crabs

Were suddenly no longer like scabs

But shuffled rejoicing, and the stars

Invisibly sang, if anyone cares.

If anyone cares, the sea’s not deep,

And after sunset people sleep.

‘The longer silence lasts, the more

Important when it ends,’ the bore

My lover whispered pleadingly.

I listened carefully to the sea.

‘Now we have time and peace, our breath

Not daily bargained for by death,

No opportunity for hate

To enter into our debate

‘No more. Time for the argument

Heaven sends to reinforce content.’

Foam querulously shook the shells.

‘We all must make our homes our hells,

So vibrant are our minds, but outward

Loss is dwarfed by its reward

Within - enormous heavens, free

Of physical necessity.’

Those artful white wind-lovers skimmed

The waves and climbed and climbed and climbed.

Oh could you know it, I must cross

Once more before my final loss.

And certainly the way they fly

Suggests good sailing weather. High

Birds obviate the sacrifice.

A handy tiller will suffice.

Cold dawn. A quick decision. Nothing

Is dazzling in the early morning.

Old love for new. My deed disproves

That I have ever newly loved -

To those who live. A hyena crept

Back over a hill. The heroes slept.

Now, as the proper day begins,

The bristles creep out over their chins.

For me to open the gate. I wind

The winch and scarcely look behind.

The horse has dropped, it has begun,

In shadow I can see the sun

Is up enough to paint the tall

Pale citadel, higher than the wall.

As the gap widens daylight creeps

On me and then the whole sun leaps

Over me into the city. My shadow

Falls like a tower, and there, below,

The sea, the plain, all in white heat,

And the tread of ten thousand armoured feet.

Troy dangles from the fingertip,

A crisping corpse upon a ship,

A fly-blown baby, as obscene

As vows of love from a machine.

Its image on the water runs

To meet the gently falling leaf

Exactly. Similes and puns

Evoke an echo of belief.

The imperfect moon the ripples make

And the reeds break is yet not fake.

Me metaphors of myself bombard,

But mostly miss, and I am hard.

Noon again. The exhausted plain

Is covered in men covered in men.

My husband’s shadow and my own

Are one, as we walk out of town

Past metal intertwined with bone

Of animal and man, all one,

All burnt. I look up into his eyes,

And sincerely apologize.

                POEMS by Peter Oswald