Mask Of Aphrodite
"There is no cure for love other than marriage."
~Irish proverb
Love's an old wolf who howls when she pleases,
her black lips drawn back in mock of a grin.
She's made me her meat for chancers and losers,
to open the locks and let anyone in.
Her yellow teeth are blunted with winters
but her fevers burn hot as melted brass.
Her eyes are flat-white as Attic marble
rolling behind Aphrodite's mask.
Her promises drift like leaves in October.
Her vows of fidelity make the stones laugh.
There's never been one she ever was true to
except the ones who died too fast.
Since I was that child who was used as a woman
since I was that woman who thinks like a child
I've run with her pack. The crows find my dinner;
there's a price to pay for being born wild.
I never whore for playthings or money
but three times it saved my life.
I never lie for the sake of loving,
only to play at being a wife.
I never was called to be a drunkard,
but I've ever been every drunkard's best friend,
to drop the mask when I see it coming;
the black-lipped snarling
bitter end.
September 2023
posted for Illicit Encounters
Images: Wolves, © Andrew Wyeth
Head of Aphrodite, via Brittanica
Ka-pow! Knocked it out of the park with this one. I LOVE the opening lines so much. I was grinning like a wolf myself as I read them. The rhythm of this poem is wonderful, the descriptions amazing. Much underlies the lines about the child used like a woman, the woman who thinks like a child. This is an amazement of a poem. Just such brilliant writing.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much Sherry. I knew the wolf reference would appeal to you.
Deletewoof. in all its permutations ~
ReplyDeleteWoof and a bit of a snarl. Thanks, M.
DeleteDayumm. This is a master class in word sorcery
ReplyDeleteThat old wolf knows shit about love except to make sure it never takes firm root. Pain, regret, destruction, ah, those are more enduring. And yes, the stones laugh at the obligatory declarations spoken into a damn paper sack. I'm glad mine is burst for good. Brilliant writing, and black as those lips.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Shay. More enduring, indeed.
DeleteThat first line really grabbed me and pulled me in! All the bitter truths of love so wonderfully captured here with imagery that is as keen as a wolf! Brilliant as always Joy!
ReplyDeleteThank you for reading and leaving your thoughts, Carrie.
DeleteA vicerally and poetically true ode here though the goddess staring from the eyeholes of the Aphrodite mask is, well, masked. My guess she's Hekate, inferred by Sappho to Aphrodite as an attendant, Hekate queen of dark rooks where drunken beddings occur. Marriage for this goddess is never a a solution (and it was only once for Aphrodite, in her ill-starred bind to Hephaestus), perhaps because lust is never truly the problem but a device, a mask for hiding the wolf. Truth is daemonic, poised at crossroads fashioned like these. So many great things to ponder in this poem but it's hardly done justice by them, so much sneaky so-satisfactory conniving in it, all the way through to the unmasking at the end. What is learned from the alien encounter but the strangeness of the face who endured it in the mirror. So well done Hedge, thanks.
ReplyDeleteAn interesting read, B. Thanks for your thoughts. I hadn't intended the wolf to be anything as formulated as a single goddess--just a wildness inside us using us in ways we are seldom aware, and that we never tame. But lust is certainly as you describe, the biggest mask of all, just as marriage is too many times an ending, a contract that skins the wolf and hangs her pelt on the wall, a trophy of something that can't be possessed unless it's dead. Thanks for this very fruitful challenge,B, because I was as far away from writing this week as Saturn's moons.
DeleteSo, the proverb made me guffaw loudly. The poem shook me to my bones. Visceral and biting, the fang of the wolf clearly at work here. Much to delight over here but the laughing stones get the rosette for me. Brilliant writing Hedge.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Paul, I originally thought the quote was from Oscar Wilde, but leave it to the Irish.
DeleteI love the rhythm and rhyme in this, and as always your imagery. Brilliant stuff...JIM
ReplyDeleteThis is a spot-on description of love, in my opinion.
ReplyDelete