by Mundy, Simon
More for Helen of Troy
Also by Simon Mundy
Poetry
Letter to Carolina
By Fax to Alice Springs
After the Games
More for Helen of Troy
Simon Mundy
Seren is the book imprint of
Poetry Wales Press Ltd.
57 Nolton Street, Bridgend,Wales, CF31 3AE
www.serenbooks.com
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The right of Simon Mundy to be identified as
the author of this work has been asserted in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
© Simon Mundy, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-85411-578-2
e-pub 978-1-85411-600-0
Kindle 978-1-78172-004-2
A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted at any time or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright holder.
The publisher acknowledges the financial assistance of the Welsh Books Council.
Cover art: Photograph ‘Deceptive Beauty’ © Ewgeniya Lyras
www.ewgeniyalyras.com
Printed in Bembo by the Berforts Group Ltd, Stevenage
Contents
More For Helen of Troy
I. Before and After the Abduction
II. Perfect Nights
III. Hair Day
IV. Deceptive Beauty
V. Parade
VI. Menelaus’ Song
VII. Paris’ Song
VIII. The Soldier’s Song
IX. Menelaus Reports
X. Valediction
Mermaid
An Incident of War
Four Lyrics
Topkapi Cat
A Prayer for a New God-daughter
Afternoon Excuse
Society Hakiu
Translated Daughter
Olympic Love
The New Senedd, Cardiff
A Vote for Absence
Lines…
Citrus
Windows
Collusion
Radnor Songs
I. The Buzzard
II. Four
III. Summergill
IV. Flat Out
V. Radnor (New)
VI. Radnor (Old), Church and Harp
Presteigne Festival/Gwaithla 25 Years On
The Island I-X
Invocation
Later
Fifth Sense
My Independence Day
Gently, of course
The End of the Exhibition
Aspects of Sea
I. Beside
II. Under
III. On
IV. Above
Acknowledgements
More for Helen of Troy
I
Before and After the Abduction
Such a clear division, surely impossible
That life can be so definite, so ordered
By one night, one dream remembered through the bruises,
The hands and worse carrying me away,
Discussing me inside and out,
Killing the pleasure of my secrets,
The frenzy of his misunderstanding
Becoming the public truth.
I have begun again, not at the beginning,
But instead at the moment when beauty
Became the source of conquest and Eros
The cruel god, instrument of Aphrodite’s revenge.
This must not decide my story, shroud my breath
Forbidding ecstasy. I will shake the dark spots from the sun.
II
Perfect Nights
As the fruitless hours wore on
In a foreign town
She could hear the absent men in battle,
Disputing her favours, her qualities,
The entrances and storerooms of pleasure
She tried to keep hidden on parade.
Lying awake and naked but mercifully
Alone she imagined distant alliances
Forged as her messages
Fell on listening ears
Inspired to faster rescue than could be managed
By the rancid men
Squabbling on the beach at dawn.
Then there would be perfect nights
Secure, warm, dark, rich and out of exile.
III
Hair Day
The braiding could take a morning
From dawn, when the other women
Yawned, too stiff to flaunt their lesser virtues,
Through the brilliance of the southern sun,
Its brightening echoed in the lightening
Of her strands from reddish gold to almost white.
Only far below, the place of Paris,
Did a dark shadow expose the soul,
Even that mown and ordered
To obedient falsehood.
IV
Deceptive Beauty
She carries all the contradictions
Of peonies, body and soul,
Bloom and stem, held proud in Spring,
First and fast to rise. Her face a glory
Budding in a perfect moon, a mystery
So contained, complex in hidden folds,
So fecund in astonishing conclusion.
In full June panoply she seems
Gaspingly beautiful, her white cheeks
Tinged with pink, her neck flecked
With clever hints of colour, her scent
Pervasive late into the cathartic evening.
Her petal skin, though, flinches
At the slightest touch, bruises even
From a kiss of admiration,
Collapses as soon as picked,
A sigh of quick capitulation.
Your sadness is misplaced, don’t worry,
For though she hates to be moved
Her roots will be among the earliest
To sense the death of frost,
Pierce the reluctant earth
And send her incarnation
Shooting from her bed again.
V
Parade
She rarely shows herself in person,
Reachable flesh, febrile scent,
Cause enough for a riot, another assault,
Escalating her protective walls, tearing aside
Her screen of indifference. But her image
Is everywhere – icon and full-length,
Embellished and crude, accurate and all make-up.
Sometimes, before the men go out to fight,
To line up for destruction, they parade
Everything they’ve got of her, portraits
So ideal they take the breath away and leave
Their bearers reckless for castigation.
VI
Menelaus’s Song
All that has gone is time
Elastic hours and nights at sea,
Around the fires fuelled with sticks
The goats left and the skeletons
Of passing ships. I tried to see you
As you were the night before our parting,
Those hours of astonishment, discovery and fear
So fleet beside these barren years.
All I can summon is the icon,
The flat ideal of beauty
Seen through another’s eye
And I dread the reuniting minutes,
You torn from your ruptured city
Wearing the lines and paint of exile
The resignation of a trophy handed back.
VII
Paris’ Song
You are a judge of course
As well as supplicant and victim,
So what will my sentence be?
A napier to your household,
Counting the cost, laundering,
Rinsing the unfortunate past
From your bright future
And all the distressing while
Acting as banker to your dreams.
VIII
The Soldier’s Song
She is so far away
I have never smelled her skin,
Felt the texture of her dress,
Once a voice sounded silken enough to fit
The official picture but it was nothing
I could prove – just a distant
Parting of the air that carried hope.
No woman I have touched is worth my life
No goddess needs it
But she is not for touching
And the years will leave her
Warm when I am mud.
IX
Menelaus Reports
That first night together again
When all that had happened in between
Came down on our tongues like kitchen weights,
We couldn’t decide where to put our hands,
Whether to flutter them, trapped birds of apology,
Or hold, trace a line of memory.
How could you be the same?
Life’s wars produce their little changes,
Damp patches on your fresco,
So desire was not the old desire,
Fraught with possession, pushed
To the limits of your acceptance,
But the slow joy of visiting
A half-remembered clearing in the woods
And finding wild strawberries
Growing there, beneath a fallen oak
Just as they always did.
X
Valediction
There have been and will be
Many powerful queens and women
Who drive boys to war,
Girls of every land will suffer
The terrors of your life,
The intrusion of strangers
Deep in the guts, the abiding hurt
No kindness can assuage,
But none will claim such beauty
That the gods become
As bellicose as men.
Mermaid
This rock, this divan of stone
Is too jagged for your tail, tearing
Young scales, the salt of sea and tears
Searing raw skin as you preen and comb,
Holding the pose for shipsful of men
Who pass in the morning.
What else can you do?
Hide in the cold northern waters that sparkle
On the surface but hold poisons that pock
Your fins with dirty sores.
Or you could hitch on board those ships,
Shed the tail, rejoice in legs and bush,
Bask on the warm sands of love
Before the mortal tides creep in
Across the disappointing strand.
No. Keep amphibious. Immortal
Beauty is worth a little weeping.
An Incident of War
Beyond midnight curfewed hands sought sanctuary
In the crypts of bodies primed for implosion.
The car rocked, imitating the breath of the distant sea
In obedience to the moonlight over the street,
Empty save for the free contentment of intent lovers
Caught by the watching sky full of rigid wings.
Besieged families had been left to the ruins, the fundamentals
Of their bickering, the petty caveats and forbiddings,
The creeds of good behaviour in atrocious times.
Across the world no caress went unnoticed,
No kiss born again without approval;
On this alone the invading and parental tribes agreed.
Such bush fires had to be snuffed out.
Whose was the cry of victory? Whose
Red line finding whose spot? Whose moral
Mountain? Whose transit of Venus?
Whose perpetual dust?
Four Lyrics
I
Water cannot be compressed
But in that uncontrite volume
More elements can lie dissolved
Than in any self-admiring wine.
The surface is shield and invitation
To this high lake beneath the fragile mountain top
(Cracked by erosion but proud summit nonetheless)
Abandoned by its glacier,
Rarely fed but often raided.
II
I kiss to be expelled,
Withdraw to draw the sortie.
It is a feint
For you rest,
Stare out calmly,
A fortified inch from my hand,
Secure in your decision that I will be
Tolerated but never pampered,
Indulged in anger or desire.
III
Impregnable
Like the old forts on tall hills
That defied all the assaults of Italy,
The Imperial ambitions
The promises of comfort and alliance.
Such formidable defences,
Rampart after rampart,
Vicious pointed stakes lining every ditch and gully,
A taunt of arrows, stones and
Fire for the unwanted visitor.
But time is for biding
The stone’s throw to the river a mile too far
When the besieger is camped on the bank.
Seldom did the warrior’s heart let her believe
The lesson from all the other forts.
That swift surrender was the only certain way
To forestall the sky from falling on her head.
IV
I open to you like flowers straining for the sun.
Swish. There.
Beheaded with one swipe
Barely pausing in your stride
You have rid the garden of me.
Topkapi Cat
When the revolution came,
Eight generations earlier,
Your ancestor said the guards’ bright
Costumes dimmed to khaki, girls
Ambled outside the harem,
Mice multiplied and though at night
It became your silent playground
There were no cushions, no fires,
No kitchens, no fallen viziers
Seeking the comfort of a purr,
Warm fur and the sweet lament of the oud.
A Prayer for a New God-daughter
Preserve the moment
When nothing is decided:
Not name, not the pace
Or direction of childhood,
The shape or frequency of love,
The pull of money, home or duty.
Cry for the future and smile
At your new day, the few already past,
And let no-one organise your mind,
Dictate your prayers or their destination.
Let your conquests be in hearts
And your mercy boundless.
Do not blame the silence
If you cannot hear the songs,
For they are all yours to compose.
Afternoon Excuse
It seemed the perfect lie
Nonlucent, impervious, elegant.
So it remained for a day
From the first insistent message
To the fluent second, too fluent,
The embellishment, the doubt trigger
The new unnecessary place where you
Had to be for the satisfaction of the gods.
Did you decide early or only
In the morning when the dread set in?
Society Haiku
So, Mr. Prufrock,
How’s the rest
of your week look?
Mega exciting?
Translated Daughter
After Auden
and the art of Klara Pokrzywko
Translated daughter
Who prints a foot
Into virgin paper
Or compliant silver
Leaves a torso
To bronze in the sun,
Takes the sweat
Of spent bodies
Tainting the sheets
And hangs them
To dry in the wind.
Come down then
And blend the acid
With immortal fire
To catch a version
Of your arms and teats
Your curling lips
Against this skin
Startle this itinerant
Mortal to perform
And serenade
The natal moment
We transform
This sombre night
Into glorious dawn.
Olympic Love
You are my cauldron, my petals of flame
Consuming hope, dropping molten rings
Here, there, nowhere near enough
For even a pentathlete to reach your body.
I want you to dive from aeroplane high clouds,
Cut the water silently, touch and score gold.
When you step up to bow your head
For the medal, freshly cast, this special anthem
Will banish nations and tell how you,
My sweet youth across the world,
Have gathered at these games for me alone.
The New Senedd, Cardiff
A Poem for the Opening, St. David’s Day 2006.
Watch the words fly in their aviary of toughened
Glass, mingling with other languages,
Obfuscating in front of everybody as if it were decent
To debate without resolution, their consonants
Finished with the thud of English,
The crack of Welsh drugging meaning
Until they float from the chimney of the politics bothy
Or are netted, protesting their innocence
And captured digitally for all to read,
Shameless in the cold of history.
A Vote for Absence
That was an unusual manifesto by any standards,
A plea for anti-votes, for noughts not crosses.
The crosses were no protection
And the noughts contained no promises.
Thirteen candidates were enough to cause
Alarm but escape from the conclusions was futile,
The message from the people clear but silent.
