Packer, Richard

Circe boiling

1. So that giggly bit Nausicaa’s got him, has she?
2. Then good luck to her. She’ll surely need it. If you ask me,
3. it will take more than the cool clippers of her legs
4. to house-trim him. Man does not love by innocence
5. alone, as she’ll soon find out.
6. He’ll be off when he gets the first whiff of salt
7. behind her musk; then nothing to be done except
8. sulk among her father’s columns, and refuse
9. to play ball in skimpy gauze for a month or two,
10. insisting her handmaids snivel with her, bemoaning
11. her wasted hymen. Small satisfaction that, if you ask me.
12.  
13. I remember crying on my own beach, a silly girl for the occasion
14. of his red sail blistering my hope’s horizon;
15. and what’s worse, I could see him and his mates frankly
16. upending their damned wineskins only a few shiplengths
17. off-coast (never mind my feelings) and staining
18. the carefully laundered tunics I said goodbye with.
19.  
20. Oh, he was happy to see the last of me, though
21. I’d done no more than peel them to the pigs they were
22. under their skiting Greek, so he’d take notice and settle down.
23. Yes: the company a man keeps is his woman’s woe. You should
24. have seen their table habits: wiping their fruity hands
25. on the brocades, if you please, while one even
26. tossed his sucked bones on the floor. I’m not what
27. you’d call a homebody, but there are limits. I wasn’t
28. putting up with a whole stinking fowlyard just for one prize bantam.
29.  
30. It beats me why I tried so hard;
31. swapping to a new face each morning, and pulling off
32. tricks I thought would tickle his obvious appetite
33. for the incredible-like olive trees dancing, myself
34. unwinding snakes from a blank plate
35. and crazing the air with all sorts of incense. Why,
36. I once turned on a floor show of grade one nymphs, and
37. as for loving, we tried everything from tiles to tigerskins.
38. But he kept on grizzling
39. about the boys in the stye, stubbing disgruntled feet
40. on the shore stones, sighing: “Penelope, Penelope,” till
41. I got absolutely fed up, gave him his friends and ship,
42. then told him he could go sling his anchor.
43.  
44. What went wrong?
45. I was bride to his every whim, as indeed a woman
46. had better be, who wants a man to stick in one bed.
47. After all, I am Circe, chartered witch, and top wet dream
48. under the moonstruck eyelids of every youth from here
49. to fastidious Persia. Nausicaa, Penelope-some chance
50. they’ve got. It’s not really a woman he wants, if you ask me.