Crown Shyness

Abstract

Crown Shyness A. E. Stallings (bio) The ancient epics do not overlap.Hector dies. Achilles is a ghost.The wooden horse is backstory at most,Or hasn't happened yet. A witch's trapTurns men to swine. A living river burns.A dog lies pining on a heap of dung.A woman waits, and is no longer young.A ransom's paid. A wanderer returns. So great trees grow, they tell us, putting downA map of roots that chart the underworldAs deep as topmost leaves reach up, unfurledInto the blue sublime, and side by side,Though deep and tall, they only grow so wide,And hold aloof, not touching at the crown. [End Page 352] ________ They hold aloof, not touching at the crown.Walking between their columns, look aboveTo see how sky's a river delta ofBlue leaking through, as puzzled light sifts down.How do they know—how do they sense the touch?We call it shyness. Is it courtesy,An antique courtliness of tree to tree,That somehow knows the border of too much? When Priam in his laden wagon cameUnder the veil of night to meet his foe,And buy the body of his son, laid low,Achilles drew back from his savage brinkTo courtesy, and said, "We are the same:Though princes, we are mortals. Eat. Drink." ________ "Though princes, we are mortals. Eat. Drink."So all that bloodshed ends, in a shared feast,Stories, tears. Dawn kindles in the East,The westering stars go ashen as they sink.As neutral birds erupt in morning choirs,Mules shake their ears, their hides atwitch with flies.There's nothing for the living but to riseAnd to prepare the wood for funeral pyres. The forest groans and braces for the axe:So many trees it takes to burn a man! [End Page 353] Nine days they gather wood from every side.Between the trees, there open up dirt tracksFor mules and sledges. Now the thwacks elideIn rhythms that no bard has ever scanned. ________ In rhythms that no bard has ever scanned,The timber falls. It's timber when it fallsAnd crashes into silence with its callsOf birdsong and its rustling sarabande,A library of turning leaves; its ringsA record of the years no needle traces,Shade the annihilating sun erases,Torn from the catalogue of living things. (It started with the catalogue of ships:Whole forests felled for keels, masts, spars, oars, hullsMade black and waterproof with tar and pitch.The sight of the armada stirred the pulseOf men more than the hair, the skin, the lipsOf beauty's queen men later called a bitch.) ________ The beauty queen men later called a bitch(She called herself that sometimes) stood aloftUpon the ramparts, while the old men coughedAnd young men died, and thought how it was rich—No wedding could go off without a hitch!— [End Page 354] Men blamed her for their bloody-minded slaughter.She missed her ex sometimes. She missed her daughter.She'd go to Egypt, and become a witch. There on the wall a fig tree grew. Its shadeIn summer made the city street a parkWhere all the little Trojan children played,Chasing each other round the wall, all gamesUntil their mothers called as it grew darkAnd they became a litany of names. ________ The shades become a litany of names.They creep up to the trough of blood to drink.And now the fog clears—they can speak and think.His mother nears to say she never blamesHim for her death of—here her sigh is sharp—A mother's broken heart. His father, well,He lives in squalor, half a man, a shell.His wife—she plays those "suitors" like a harp. (Someday he'll show his father as he grievesThe orchards he was promised: thirteen pears,Ten apple trees, two scores of figs, and vinesThat make the best home brew a vineyard bears,Not strong as Agamemnon's sea-dark wines,But sweet and bright, like light through olive leaves.) [End Page...