Lament

Lament

Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?
Are these the hands that caressed fair Paris’ face?
Is this Helen, whose beauty is a curse,
Whose kisses are fatal
And whose love is a winding path towards Hades’ dominion?

Is this me?

Long have the cries of widows kept me company at night.
Long has my name been spat by those whose toils are greatest.

Why, oh goddess of passionate deceit,
Why can you not veil my face and shame
So I could walk but a shadow from life,
Away from the fiends of guilt and sin?
If you love your daughter,
Then bear her up into the heavens above.
I implore you, do not make me look
Upon the eyes of my daughter.
Do not let me see the pain
Worth ten years of solitude.
I beseech you.

The heat of the blazing city is burning my skin.
It stings of bitter remorse, of a shameful past.
The fumes suffocate me.
They smell of smouldering flesh, of death and decay.
The wails of the women and children seem distant, as if they are already dead.
They wait for me on the other side of the River Styx and they beckon me
For an eternity of misery.
Will you help me then, goddess?
Or will I no longer amuse you, when skin turns parched
And when beauty is gone?

The sweet smell of roses engulfs me and I know Aphrodite is nearby.
I can feel her coils working their way around me.
And I know she is not done with me.

Oh Fates, have pity and hasten in your work
So that I might have little more to endure.
Aphrodite laughs and her whispered answer chills me.
I shall never die.
I will be immortal in the minds of men for centuries to come.
A tear eludes me.
I pray Menelaus kills me in his hot rage.
I pray he will throw me in the fiery pits below.
I pray, in vain.

When Menelaus finds me, his anger will ebb.
The seamstress goddess still works at her web.