The carats of this diamond, who can count?

Arms weakening as embrace succeeds embrace,

Another’s body pliant to my assault,

Great, candid eyes, deceiving with such grace –

“I shall drink your tears – but make them less salt.”

At the spasm she starts up, comatose,

A sweet pillow in which there beats a heart;

But sweetest of all, her loving mouth glows –

Her mouth, summit of Aphrodite’s art.

Our mouths must form but one single alcove,

As you might join two cages door to door

For two wild beasts to consummate their love –

Our tongues thus bride and groom for ever more.

Like Adam, by a double breath inspired,

Awaking, finds that Eve is by his side,

I wake, and find my Queen so long desired –

Helen – eternal beauty – is my bride.

From the depths of time, an echoing horn sighed:

“Helen,

The plain

Of Hellen

Is wholly

Eros.

“To destroy

Troy

Is deployed

The pride

Of Argos.

“The skilled

Achill’

Despoils

The soil

Where Priam

Pleads.”

The track of his chariot, which drags, obscene,

The corpse of Hector round the Trojan walls,

Enframes a gleaming mirror, in which Queen

Helen, naked, as her hair softly falls –

Queen Helen –

Preens

Herself.

“Helen,

The plain

Of Hellen

Is wholly

Love.”

Old Priam pleads from his tower above:

“Achilles, Achilles, remorseless foe,

Your heart’s harder than iron, than brass, than gold –

Harder, Achilles, than those walls below,

Harder than all our rough Trojan walls!”

At her mirror, the Queen preens herself:

“Oh no, Priam, nothing is so hard

As these ivory bucklers – Helen’s breasts;

Their coral points quickened by wounds arid blood,

Like seagull’s eyes, encased in hard, white, downy nests:

Cold irises surround their scarlet soul’s regard.

No, no, no, Priam – nothing is so hard.”.

Paris, sly foe

On Achill’ steals

Like Cupid, with bow –

Arrows his heel;

Paris-Eros

So blond and so rose,

Handsome Paris, destroyer of peace,

Goddesses’ judge, yet lover of women;

The ravisher of Helen of Greece,

Son of Priam,

Paris, the bowman, is laid bare:

Over his wild traces exults a chariot of war,

The vultures feed on his sex and on his dead eyes:

“Helen,

The plain

Of Hellen

Is wholly

Love.”

Fate, Fate, oh cruel, too cruel Fate!

You drink the blood of mortals with foul joy:

Brave Hellenic bodies bestrew the plain of Troy,

Fate and vultures the same feast arrogate.

Too cruel Fate! Fate – the gods’ hard forbear!

But Helen, opening her, lovely, limpid eyes:

“Fate is but a word – there is nothing in the skies –

If ever, than my eyes, other skies there were.

“Mortals, do not pale; dare to scrutinize

My eyes’ blue abyss; see mirrored there the slain.

Menelaus, Paris, they are both dead,

Husband and lover – and the dead bestrew the plain

To make a softer carpet to my tread,

A carpet of love, quivering beneath the prize;

And then, I often dress myself in green,