David Capps
Helen


She sang the songs of wives, Helen
as she knew her people’s tricks.
Trapped inside the horse and weeping
for all they heard, the homesick.
Can you imagine, though, if it worked,
if these two tricks had cancelled
each other out, and the ruse of pushing
against the tides in anticipation
of leaving, had been for nothing,
and venting within fumes the Greek
gift found out. If she had been Helen
and captured in her song such an ardor
that didn’t stink of suspicion
but convinced in a single lyric
of its truth. Then what need for war
when there is understanding of how
Paris could not have resisted. Then she
tiptoes in the image of love below
the planks swelling with the smell of sea,
sings the Aegean, sings the sky, she
who is not Helen.

*

In Recollection (after Emperor Julian)

the scars of fire are gone
and the fullness
upon the world, yet the stars
the silver moon
hides from our sight

remain.