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This was no ordinary woman.
She grabbed me on the shoulder
Saying, “What, man, are you afraid of girls?”
True, I had been afraid of women,
And used Ovid’s sarcastic wisdom,
The trick of fancy and the vision
Of women most men indulge in
To overcome tales of love
Which that Italian fanatic once trilled nicely of:
Freezing and burning together,
Devoted to the death of all ordinary senses
For adoration’s sake.
To abandon ourselves to woman’s grace
Is to become something else, like Elvis, to shake
In a music of ecstasy
Which the popular mind winds frivolously.
But I was humble, too, and not outspoken—
I had lived some years, had my heart broken,
And so with Ovid and Dante’s ghosts and experience at my side
I was fully prepared to simply smile
And turn away, or stare her down, or even deride
This unfashionable effrontery
Which, in fact, humbled me in school once
When I was a romantic dunce—
Then the girl was just being cruel.
But this one was furious and amorous and everything at once
And she looked me in the face and my defenses fled
And I thought, “Is she mad?”
What’s that hauteur from?
Then I thought, “I’ll humble her in bed
If that’s what she wants. What does she want
And who the hell does she think she is?”
She was beautiful and had the lips
Which only become more beautiful in mockery
And eyes made, it seemed, to gleam in mockery,
And her closeness made my mind weak:
Had I insulted her? No, I knew this was amour,
The kind that makes Ovid plan and Petrarch poor
And Mars give up his arms for Venus
And mistily tugs at roaming Odysseus.
A challenge directly from an entrancing woman,
A come-on, a dare, a love more than human,
A sorceress hurling modesty and decorum to the wind
In hopes of ruining and pleasuring a male.
She was mad, radiant, in full sail
And tired of being the passive woman,
An altar piece, a substitute for a male vision,
The butt of a man’s sarcastic wisdom.
She repeated her gibe and kissed me on the lips
And I became Helen and she, a fleet of ships—
Tall of sail, roaring, armed for war,
Far away from everything on the ocean.
