Quiver
“desires like fell and cruel hounds”
Let’s start with the stag.
No hedging, no prevarication,
no semiotics or white lies.
Let’s start, simply, with this tale of transformation.
Artemis and Actaeon. As good as any other.
I’ll begin by simply asking you,
Imagine this. The weight of the antlers,
the stagginess of the moulting coat,
the staggy eyes with their bushy lashes,
the intimacy of the moment
when for the first time
a man sees the body of a woman.
And then this man becomes a stag.
Let’s start with the Dewars poster on the wall,
his proud glance,
let’s start with the head at the feet of the huntsman,
the stag’s blood, his rite of passage
daubed on his skin as if accidents with a razor
– the cheek torn, cotton-woolly kind –
were all it took to make a man of him.
Let’s start with what he once was
that day as he peeked and pried,
a young man, bold as brass,
in those days when seeing was doing,
the eucalyptus whispering
as this woman undresses
who is also a god. And while he watches her,
as water somehow possesses her,
rids the privacy of her well-formed body,
then gives itself up
like the body gives up perfume, sweat,
revealing her, as she emerges,
clavicle, breast-bone,
the blue vein at her child-free nipple,
the thatch of hair that covers the pubis:
Artemis, single-minded,
casting about red-cheeked,
groping for her bow and arrow
refusing to be naked for this man.
That’s when the story starts,
with the divine inviolate,
that’s where the story starts
in the terrible comedy of shame.
And when we ask how desire runs
upwards on the spine’s ladder, to the nape,
and down again
on that central point
between labia and coccyx,
that private space the huntsman longed for,
perhaps wanted to bring
between thumb and forefingers
to know in himself interior joy,
we must ask then why desire that runs
between humans and gods
is always ill-fated, as our story now
hangs on a breath as we pin back our ears,
cut the umbilicus, its glistening thread . . .
Take Semele, consumed by fire
in the face of Zeus, Dionysis her son
left to mature in the incubator of
his father’s thigh, a scrawny cry
as he was born, wriggling
from his tight papoose; or that bright nymph
Echo, known for her poetry, heartbreaking songs,
damned by Hera till her bones turned to stone
and her voice a whisper; Narcissus her lover
condemned to keep looking
transformed to a lonesome waterside flower.
But let’s shift back our focus
to Actaeon / Artemis, the goddess’s companion
who had also spotted our peeping Tom,
who longed to push her breasts against his back,
rub peplon and chiton against that chest,
for whom chastity is a spiritual heist,
who covets most the watermark streaks,
stretchmarks on a mother’s skin,
who in Titian’s painting failed again
under the skull of a stag. Faith,
let’s call her that, who wanted nothing more
than the spillage of silver,
who as she watched him watching them
as they undressed, slipped off her dress,
this time without caution,
holding her arms above her head,
prolonging the moment of her nudity,
airing the flex and tautness of her limbs,
the narrow triangle of her unmarked back,
the downy base of that fragile neck.
Let’s imagine what would have happened
had Artemis not spotted him.
For here it was, dark as a plum,
the genesis of a ruined moment,
the intoxication of a bird’s first flight,
the rumination of the world,
a man aspiring to see the goddess.
And wanting what? To feel her goodness
not as a violation, and a woman,
not a goddess, but infused with her goodness,
wanting to find a part of herself in this man
as she felt his body as a line of pleasure:
it is done, here it is, we have done it, it is done.
For what she wanted was belief in a self.
What she wanted was to look at the goddess,
to see something there of herself, too;
what she wanted
was to look at the man without fear or shame
with an image of herself from which to begin.
But that bronzed creature, which is where,
in a fashion, we began,
was no answer, as she peered into the bathing pool,
seeing the stag by her own face,
pregnant now, though she doesn’t know it,
and the stag ripped apart by the hounds . . .
Those hounds! Imagined now as what?
An ever-changing line of mothers, daughters, long-lived women?
Antigone and Clytemnestra, Penelope and Joan.
The names might go on, being all things and nothing,
finding within themselves routes to becoming:
lovers of women, lovers of men. Names
trip off the tongue: Millicent, Sylvia,
Christabel, Emily, Angel Virginia, No-nonsense Simone,
Glorious Gloria, Unblushing Germaine;
Fierce Luce, Brave Julia, la belle Hélène.
They burn like a catechism, are worthy of praise.
Here’s hound Catherine, now, with her crown of thorns,
Little Saint Bride with her cow-print jacket,
Agnes the Borzoi, the Windhound Poor Clare.
Here’s Aphra, Felicia, Adelaide, Christina,
so many Elizabeths they can’t all be named . . .
But let us return now to Faith,
the mother perhaps of all invention,
tears pouring from her virgin cheeks,
still hoping to find herself, anywhere, anyhow,
witness to the spillage of blood,
as Actaeon, whom she has loved,
or the idea of him, who has made her unchaste,
is disembowelled, whose brave head, as she sees it,
lies ludicrous on the sandy floor.
She would light up the forest with candles, if she could,
wear his head like a headdress of candles,
so that wax and blood was intermingled,
would drip to her shoulders in rosy tears.
And yet, with her cold stare, now,
Artemis at her shaking side,
patron of childbirth and chastity,
the double-voiced nature of her own creation,
with a miraculous stirring divorced from her body
scratches out words with a stick on the floor.
And the empty-eyed sky looks down, regardless,
as Faith dresses, rolls back her sleeves,
her eyes more knowing than she is telling
as she holds up a mirror to the goddess,
looks at herself, behind her, through it,
and on.
Let’s start with the stag.
No hedging, no prevarication,
no semiotics or white lies.
Let’s start, simply, with this tale of transformation.
Artemis and Actaeon. As good as any other.
I’ll begin by simply asking you,
Imagine this. The weight of the antlers,
the stagginess of the moulting coat,
the staggy eyes with their bushy lashes,
the intimacy of the moment
when for the first time
a man sees the body of a woman.
And then this man becomes a stag.
Let’s start with the Dewars poster on the wall,
his proud glance,
let’s start with the head at the feet of the huntsman,
the stag’s blood, his rite of passage
daubed on his skin as if accidents with a razor
– the cheek torn, cotton-woolly kind –
were all it took to make a man of him.
Let’s start with what he once was
that day as he peeked and pried,
a young man, bold as brass,
in those days when seeing was doing,
the eucalyptus whispering
as this woman undresses
who is also a god. And while he watches her,
as water somehow possesses her,
rids the privacy of her well-formed body,
then gives itself up
like the body gives up perfume, sweat,
revealing her, as she emerges,
clavicle, breast-bone,
the blue vein at her child-free nipple,
the thatch of hair that covers the pubis:
Artemis, single-minded,
casting about red-cheeked,
groping for her bow and arrow
refusing to be naked for this man.
That’s when the story starts,
with the divine inviolate,
that’s where the story starts
in the terrible comedy of shame.
And when we ask how desire runs
upwards on the spine’s ladder, to the nape,
and down again
on that central point
between labia and coccyx,
that private space the huntsman longed for,
perhaps wanted to bring
between thumb and forefingers
to know in himself interior joy,
we must ask then why desire that runs
between humans and gods
is always ill-fated, as our story now
hangs on a breath as we pin back our ears,
cut the umbilicus, its glistening thread . . .
Take Semele, consumed by fire
in the face of Zeus, Dionysis her son
left to mature in the incubator of
his father’s thigh, a scrawny cry
as he was born, wriggling
from his tight papoose; or that bright nymph
Echo, known for her poetry, heartbreaking songs,
damned by Hera till her bones turned to stone
and her voice a whisper; Narcissus her lover
condemned to keep looking
transformed to a lonesome waterside flower.
But let’s shift back our focus
to Actaeon / Artemis, the goddess’s companion
who had also spotted our peeping Tom,
who longed to push her breasts against his back,
rub peplon and chiton against that chest,
for whom chastity is a spiritual heist,
who covets most the watermark streaks,
stretchmarks on a mother’s skin,
who in Titian’s painting failed again
under the skull of a stag. Faith,
let’s call her that, who wanted nothing more
than the spillage of silver,
who as she watched him watching them
as they undressed, slipped off her dress,
this time without caution,
holding her arms above her head,
prolonging the moment of her nudity,
airing the flex and tautness of her limbs,
the narrow triangle of her unmarked back,
the downy base of that fragile neck.
Let’s imagine what would have happened
had Artemis not spotted him.
For here it was, dark as a plum,
the genesis of a ruined moment,
the intoxication of a bird’s first flight,
the rumination of the world,
a man aspiring to see the goddess.
And wanting what? To feel her goodness
not as a violation, and a woman,
not a goddess, but infused with her goodness,
wanting to find a part of herself in this man
as she felt his body as a line of pleasure:
it is done, here it is, we have done it, it is done.
For what she wanted was belief in a self.
What she wanted was to look at the goddess,
to see something there of herself, too;
what she wanted
was to look at the man without fear or shame
with an image of herself from which to begin.
But that bronzed creature, which is where,
in a fashion, we began,
was no answer, as she peered into the bathing pool,
seeing the stag by her own face,
pregnant now, though she doesn’t know it,
and the stag ripped apart by the hounds . . .
Those hounds! Imagined now as what?
An ever-changing line of mothers, daughters, long-lived women?
Antigone and Clytemnestra, Penelope and Joan.
The names might go on, being all things and nothing,
finding within themselves routes to becoming:
lovers of women, lovers of men. Names
trip off the tongue: Millicent, Sylvia,
Christabel, Emily, Angel Virginia, No-nonsense Simone,
Glorious Gloria, Unblushing Germaine;
Fierce Luce, Brave Julia, la belle Hélène.
They burn like a catechism, are worthy of praise.
Here’s hound Catherine, now, with her crown of thorns,
Little Saint Bride with her cow-print jacket,
Agnes the Borzoi, the Windhound Poor Clare.
Here’s Aphra, Felicia, Adelaide, Christina,
so many Elizabeths they can’t all be named . . .
But let us return now to Faith,
the mother perhaps of all invention,
tears pouring from her virgin cheeks,
still hoping to find herself, anywhere, anyhow,
witness to the spillage of blood,
as Actaeon, whom she has loved,
or the idea of him, who has made her unchaste,
is disembowelled, whose brave head, as she sees it,
lies ludicrous on the sandy floor.
She would light up the forest with candles, if she could,
wear his head like a headdress of candles,
so that wax and blood was intermingled,
would drip to her shoulders in rosy tears.
And yet, with her cold stare, now,
Artemis at her shaking side,
patron of childbirth and chastity,
the double-voiced nature of her own creation,
with a miraculous stirring divorced from her body
scratches out words with a stick on the floor.
And the empty-eyed sky looks down, regardless,
as Faith dresses, rolls back her sleeves,
her eyes more knowing than she is telling
as she holds up a mirror to the goddess,
looks at herself, behind her, through it,
and on.
Page(s) 34-38
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