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FOR PARIS, HELEN, TROY....AND?
Enraged snarls echo as if I would run:
Through ages has my mark with my footsteps been made firm;
Dardanelles and Priam, Paris and Hector,
Horatius and Troilus, Cressida and Trojan:
Ten years and more could not shake a resolve,
Who was right, who was wrong, to this day the sands solve.
For Helen? For the acclaimed beauty of Troy?
Or for the passion that made Paris destroy;
The foundations and forts of a great city,
With the fury of love rewriting its history?
On one side, for ten years, no one was a victor,
How a wooden horse took Helen from her tower.*
Was it skin-deep beauty that launched a thousand ships?
Or was it love's truth that cherishes all anguish?
The pain and the misery when the beloved is stolen?
Even though it is said bonds are made in heaven?
For Helen does my heart sigh, for Paris does my mind reel,
Yet this hideous sea of liars remember Achilles' heel.
I mock windswept sand-scrolls, I laugh at the sea's ink,
Somewhere it is Helen, somewhere it is Mary*;
One still sails with Paris, the other scoffs at power:
What was Dardanelles and the horse called Trojan,
If not sailor's proverbs of guile and deception?
That is when my heart's waves make fun of reason.
So, I too lost my love to this dark and deep ocean,
When on a smooth day, the sky rained its venom,
The waves of jealousy broke the hands that held us,
Like Troy weeping its grief at the loss of Helen.
How beautiful and quiet it appears to the eyes,
How many skins does this sea have changing every season?
For centuries I will mourn for Troy and its Helen,
But who will be there for me, or for my loved one?
