Epiphainein
Penelope
Laurie on the sand
and you are smitten
while I am bereft
the Irish have
such lily white skin
you said it must be the salt air
I can still taste
on your hands.
To say yes
my mountain laurel yes
murmuring James Joyce*
in her ear I hear you
ask her with your eyes
then ask again yes
would she? yes
echoes in my own ear
say yes oh please say yes
Atlantic Ocean in your hair
your body like a wall
a sea wall pressing
surf pounding on the rocks
then sighing
would she? well why not
as well this one
as all the others
yes she wants to yes.
And I go mad
with imagining this
as she pulls you down.
July, ’87
*See closing lines of Ulysses, James Joyce, “As a girl in Gibraltar . . . ”
Variations of James Joyce
I must go
yes I know
I don’t want to hurt you
yes
I will walk you to the door
yes
this is but the bedroom
yes I will yes
as I have forever
yes
just take off these things
it is all I ask please
yes
it is all so beautiful
everything
yes I know
my taste has always had
its moments . . .
Ages bear down
archetypally
thumbprints of blood
without pity:
women bear children
in pain — pain splits
not the womb
but compassion
umbilicus binding.
Feb 20, 1990
Lighthouse
I come from a long line
of women who wait
women born on islands surrounded by sea
who know the heartbeat
of the womb the unconscious
women who always wait.
Women born inland
suckled by massive
continents do not
do this — this waiting.
They forge forward
always westward, women
of purpose, secure and
confident. But the
women of Ireland of
Denmark of Ithaca —
they wait. Their rage
is in younger years when
they think they are stronger
than the sea. Later with
grace they patiently wait.
The sea talks to them
cradles them and they stay
through foghorns and tidal
waves, sea beating at
the walls. Action is
foreign to them. Look —
she is there on the
widow’s walk — house on
the cliff riven from
the sea — in black: thin,
high cheekboned, jaw strong
from waiting, taller than
she should be, but tall as
she need be, to see;
beacon-eyed, dark hair
austere, more comfortable
loving than beloved.
She is guarding the shoreline as she always has done so that others
who do not live on
islands or who are
brave enough to go
to sea may survive.
3/89
The Trouble in Ithaca
It was not that Odysseus
meant to go astray. Overlooking
his fondness for trickery and
inclination to disguise himself
within his gifts bestowed upon
strangers, he was an honorable
man, one of great strength and genius
merely caught up in the momentum
of the moment, quarrels of the gods.
And war, after all, was the noblest
epic trick, so why struggle against
one’s destiny? Menelaus and
Agamemnon commanded him.
A brief stint of feigning madness
and he was off, deeds wrought with arms
that would live beyond the sometimes silly Achilles, prone to sulking,
depressed with his heel of wounded pride.
The difficulty was not so much
with Penelope either, fated
to wait anyway. She would have
managed somehow, even were
her Odysseus never to return
and she forced to choose amongst the
loathsome suitors polluting her door.
No, the difficulty was with
Telemachus. Fatherless, he was
growing up beside fools, watching
his inheritance gobbled alive,
defenseless, directionless; he
needed his father desperately,
could not reach manhood without him and
prayed Athena guide him safely home.
The faith of Odysseus did not
falter and Athena, good fortune
for Telemachus, did not fail.
3/89
Nora Speaks*
I let Athena help him
it was terribly hard
missing him as I did
I wanted him to need
no ladies beyond me
but she was a goddess
and I perhaps am sinning
when I say I let her help
him for surely she’d
have done it anyhow and
I’d have only gotten in
my own way and maybe
met an awful fate so
I bowed to Athena and
began to pray to her too
offering hecatombs like
so many hail marys for
his safety and then there
were all the others — Circe
Calypso and that little
hussy Nausica so
pretentious and virtuous
in blooming nubility
and virginity and though
I know he speaks with shudders
when recounting Scylla and
Charybdis still I’m sure
he knew that sea pussey well
and the monster Scylla
once a tempting maid — besides
he listened to the Sirens
didn’t he? men who do
such things cannot be stopped
and who was I to stop him?
oh well it’s true I have
spat the vile of envy
and wished the lot of them
dead but here I am yet
breathing and there’s something
that kept him coming back.
3/89
*James Joyce’s Nora (Molly Bloom) speaks in the voice of Penelope
For M.S.
O Child of Achilles
turn the heels of your soul
to Artemis that she
may see once again
the place where your mother
neglected to dip you
into the River Styx.
When winds won’t stop at
Aulis you know that
it is Artemis who
blows so wild like
a wounded tigress
demanding her sacrifice
before you set sail.
Touch not the lambs of
Artemis, the harts of
the forest, the mothers
about to give birth.
Touch not the golden cord,
umbilicus of life,
sheathed by the virgin mid-wife.
Later, you will have sulked
in silence, reluctant,
O Child of Achilles,
to embrace your fate:
selfish Agamemnon,
careless mother and
cruel tigress Artemis,
sister of one who
will slay you. How they
all have betrayed you!
Can you and I forgive that
we may live beyond
unconscious replay
of this ancient myth?
Jan, ’90
Holy Saturday
Tonight the moon is red,
Looking like the end
of a bloody tampon,
edges serrated
by the flux and flow,
post apex of twenty-eight days.
Or, like the exposed breast
of a woman in black
who has been mutilated
by some cosmic beast,
her nipple torn away
and the blood having
thoroughly soaked her skin.
Or, like a wafer
dipped in wine and bitten once
in the cannibalism
of Christian Communion:
this is my body
and blood shed for thee . . .
How appropriate, this moon,
on Holy Saturday.
4/89
Animus
More than a few moons,
cycling through the tunnels
of their youth, have disappeared
since he’s been missing.
There never was a body,
so no one, of course, can be
sure. She’s tried to leave things as
they were, but time, pedaling
fast, persistently
rearranges, with
apparent sameness,
each wave, each moon-tugged tide
that churns the beaches of her
shores. Her finger prints wear
the image she’s trying to
restore to life. She
knows she’ll be found guilty,
probably by nature,
yet she cannot lead them to
the body without his help
and he’s not there to help her.
She’ll find a body,
any body, and say it’s
he, and that she did it,
because she can’t stand
all these unanswered questions
and endless moons sultry
and desultory-seeming,
can’t stand the thought he
might still live somehow, somewhere.
She will kill him herself
inside her and find then
a surrogate, except
the torture won’t stop
for having fooled all of them
with delectable corpus,
corpus delecti,
corpus luteum.
She really doesn’t know:
he might be out there fighting,
trying to survive in
a jungle or prison camp
with the damp breath and narrow
eyes of death upon him.
And these babies that
he’s left behind, so
hard to nurture, oh
why can’t she know,
can’t they find a body
and identify him by
tooth or odd remain?
Why must it be left
to her to supply the
body, the answer she
doesn’t want to give
since she knows she did it all
while the moon had closed an eye?
4/89
For a Girl in a Coma, Raped and Beaten in Central Park
Artemis runs in the park
alone, in the dark.
Sister of Apollo,
she is accompanied
by wolves; the pack is
her only companion.
Well past wolf-light, twilight, she
runs with them and protects them
and their woodlands from
the rape by mankind.
For a marathon of
centuries she’s been
chased by the hatred, the
hatred of men who fear her.
Blame it on black skin
and ignorance if you can
but as long as she’s been free
of males and their will
there have been those who’ve chased her.
Always they’ve resented her —
her freedom, her defiance —
her head tossed like a pony’s,
her mouth pursed downward,
a Corinthian capital,
a curling frond of disdain,
a capital crowning
a column, in the temple
of her brother Apollo,
like her, a lover of trees.
Artemis runs in the park
in stride with the wolves of her
brother, wolves become her wolves,
in stride with Apollo,
first of the werewolves.
And for a marathon
of centuries the order is preserved.
But Artemis asks for a
sacrifice, her leverage
the fear she arouses.
‘Round her neck is a garland,
the balls of many bulls.
The wolves know this and
they respect her as
they run together.
Then one day she asks for more
and Iphegenia dies.
The boys, marauding,
feel this, unspoken
in their blood. Wilding,
they must stamp her out
or payment may increase.
The boys will rape and
sacrifice, lest Artemis
ask for more. Disguised
as wolves they turn and
eat their mistress up.
Where has Apollon gone?
He who brought reason
has fled from the temple
sorely won from pythons.
Men no longer atone
for their sins and titans
again eat their children.
4/89