THE DAINTY MONSTERS
Michael
Ondaatje
back next
|
O Troy’s Down: Helen’s Song
My husband, corporeal and crude,
eats meals like a warrior;
his only manly action to speak of.
But the image is too hackneyed.
Know that once at a dawn
I woke to see him dancing in silence
by the bedroom mirror
and in a snake dance
(his belly an undigested beast)
he spun from side to side
his arms and paunch
flapping like waves.
This you should remember.
And now with him
I loosen like the end of spring;
my stomach paunches in private,
my breasts hang comfortably.
(Oh I could glitter like the stomach of the sun!)
My gentle proud daughter
what can you show but pity
and that a condescending emotion
—better agony at all our slow withering.
I knew a man once
who never withered.
Now sixteen summers since
now I still move
to his imagined dancing in the wind
on my morning balcony.
I too dance
but with no mirror.
If I could speak
of Paris to you,
your understanding my dear child
would stale
all this uncertain agony.
And I, in this year,
need your agony.
He had nightmares of an egg;
inside the egg
two inverted lovers
strained against the shell
with their passion.
Oh how we yelled with love!
My frail white daughter
if I should breathe
these thoughts to you at night
I would with all the senses
left now to me call
Paris, Paris, Paris, Paris, Paris.
|
