That her love could hold her false so lightly
That someone would tell such a lie
That she dared to feel joy.
She considers all things as they stand
And what it means to be good.
Her heart turns cold in wonder.
III. 799–889
Cushions
And then he is suddenly there
And her words not quick
But a kiss.
And all that is left to their broker
Is smoothing the silk and plumping the feathers.
Now you can begin. I’ll be over there
Reading something or other.
III. 958–980
Grain
She gathers up the harm
His suspicions might have done
And seeks within this bushel the one pure grain
Of love.
It is enough.
Why can feelings not bear their own name?
He does not say this jealousy was an invention.
III. 1023–1050
The feeling of his sorrow
That she is made so distraught
By his deceit
Turns him upon himself
And he finds that there is nothing of himself
He can bear to keep.
All life in him has flown.
Derelict – he falls down.
III. 1065–1092
Troilus collapses
Wax
The prince lies at her feet.
She is instructed to help him onto the bed, to warm
His palms, his wrists, his temples, to rub, to dab
To stroke, to kiss, to reach an arm around him.
He finds a form.
Their friend sees that he can do no more
And carries off the candle.
III. 1114–1141
Pandarus takes charge
Aspen
He holds her so completely that she shakes.
This is what she’s read about in books
But never known. The lightness
That comes from being free of doubt.
Willing the breeze.
About to be let go by the tree
Not to fall but float.
III. 1198–1226
Shift
She moves away only to undress
Discarding her garments piece by piece
Till she stands in her shift
And – like a bride – hesitates
Then laughs:
Shall I free myself of this?
And she does.
IF III. 31–32
Honeysuckle
As about a tree with many a twist
They wind themselves into
A thousand tendrils.
The depth of each flower.
The fullness of detail.
The kiss upon kiss upon kiss
Being met, being equal.
III. 1230–1232
A nightingale
She cannot help but cry out
Only to stop as she starts
For fear of who’s passing
Or what might be hidden within.
Then she breathes
And finding her voice
Shows him everything.
III. 1233–1239
In this heaven he starts to delight
A place of softest snow
A place of rise and fall
A place of open paths
A place of long curves
A place of pale cloud
A place of fine feathers
A place without walls.
III. 1247–1302
The slipping night
They will not sleep
But think themselves dreaming nonetheless
So perfected is this.
Minute by minute so complete
Each brings the question of the next:
Is this your true self?
What of this can I possibly keep?
III. 1338–1348, IF III. 34
Live certain of my love
At dawn they turn over the matter of parting
If he could be certain she will hold him
In mind. If she could believe herself fixed
In his. She takes a gold and azure brooch
Set with a ruby heart and pins it to his shirt
In outline.
III. 1366–1372, 1485–1499, IF III. 49
The idea of it
Returning home he slinks under the covers
Hoping for sleep but what comes is the night
Just gone. He sees it all so brightly
And she better lit than ever before.
Returning home she cannot stop speaking of him
To herself and weighs each second
That has to pass before they meet again.
III. 1534–1554, IF III. 54–55
Take up the thread
At last you’re at ease
But do not look so triumphant.
You will need just as many strategies
To hold on to what you’ve won. Such joy
Is delicately bound. This is self-evident.
Think how hard it is to contain.
Tighten the knot.
III. 1615–1638
Pandarus points out to Troilus that this is not an end
BOOK FOUR
Luck
They are caught in Fortune’s brightest gaze
And brightly lit must watch her turn away.
Her face drawn down and darkening
Into shadows and hollows
Like an old story
About the cost of beauty.
Betrayal. Blame. Who’d be a woman?
IV. 1–21, IF III. 94
The long day closes
At summer’s breaking point
Hector gathers his best men and goes full out.
They burst onto the broad plains resplendent
With spears, maces, swords and axes.
About to win, they are misled.
The Greeks move in to kill or capture.
Those who survive must have fled.
IV. 30–49
An investment
The old king intervenes
To propose an exchange of prisoners.
The calculations are made: of mutual worth
And how any surplus value might be met.
In the Greek camp Calchas draws near
To those doing the sums. Hoping for a cut
He pitches his idea.
IV. 57–68
Priam takes command from Hector
A changed face
I came here with nothing more than my vision
Relinquishing my entire estate.
You know you’ll win.
Do you also know I left a daughter sleeping?
What hardness in my heart refused to wake
Her – now defenceless and alone!
I should have dragged her here in her nightgown . . .
IV. 71–112
Calchas has tears in his eyes
Any day now
I have seen it in the oracle of Apollo, in the stars
In the auguries of birds, in the casting of lots.
When the city falls you will more than recoup your costs.
Why not give me one prisoner
With whom I can free my daughter?
In his cracked voice they hear a cracked heart.
They give him Antenor.
IV. 106–133
Safeguards
The king, his sons and all his lords
Dispute the Greek terms.
And it is said:
For Antenor they want the lady Criseyde.
Like the soldiers sent to guarantee passage
For the enemy ambassadors
Troilus demurs.
IV. 141–158
He turns over in himself
He must speak but he has promised
To tell no one of their affai
r.
How might he protect her honour?
How might he protect himself from the loss of her?
He does not have her permission to decide this.
Like a boat drifting towards a fork in a river
He does not know he wavers.
IV. 148–168, IF IV. 14–16
Chaff
The words that should come
Come from the mouth of his brother:
We do not sell our women.
She’s no prisoner for barter.
Hector! Have you fallen
For the traitor’s daughter?
We choose Antenor.
IV. 176–196
A dead image
His mind can do nothing with this
So carries it off. Mindless
He makes his way home, bolts the door
And puts out every lamp in his chamber
As if plucking the last bright leaves
From the blackest tree in winter.
He is branch and bark – the barest dark.
IV. 219–230, IF IV. 21
Troilus alone
A living creature
What he feels is of such size
And wiring
It must kick its way out
To survive him.
Excessively strong
And otherwise nothing
It throws him wall to wall.
IV. 239–259
Envy
The gods have looked upon this love
And decided the cost.
Could they not kill his father?
Or snatch one of his brothers?
Was this just to prove
How useless it is to be human?
How lost?
IV. 274–287
He prays that he might leave his body
My spirit unnest.
Fly to her and follow her.
Your right place is no longer here.
What is there to look on but her departure?
Not even the time to grow used to it.
I have cried myself out.
My eyes are noughts.
IV. 302–312
To her father
I wish your corrupt blood had stopped your heart
As you hurried off. Mislived old man
I wish the Greeks had cut your gristly throat
When you proposed this trade.
Your life weighs too much
On mine. Come home
And I will separate us.
IV. 330–336
He sleeps and wakes
His friend is at a loss.
He stands in the dark
And folds his arms.
Why not be satisfied with the fact
That you’ve had what you wanted?
This town is full of women.
I could rustle up a dozen such . . .
IV. 344–406
Pandarus moves on
An abbreviation
New love is required to chase out the old.
A new approach for this new world.
Weeping won’t keep her from leaving.
You need to put things in proportion.
At last the prince says something:
Your medicine, my friend,
Is cure for a fiend.
IV. 415–437
Now this, now that
As if I have been stung
And the cure is something fresh and green.
As if logic were an ingredient, there to add,
And love all air.
If that’s how you feel then take her.
You’re the son of the king.
Free to take what you dare.
IV. 461–530
All this have I thought
What have we become these last seven years
Because a woman was forced? I could approach my father
But that would make known all that’s gone on.
He would say she is not of our blood
And that she must go for the city’s good.
I must protect her honour
Even as I cannot protect her.
IV. 547–571
Troilus looks to the past and future
Divine not reason so deep
Wash your face and go about your business.
Return to court before the king starts to wonder
Where you are. In times of crisis
Things become a matter of rhetoric.
It’s hardly force to withhold the one you love
And who loves you. And what of her?
Does she even know this deal’s been struck?
IV. 589–656
Pandarus urges Troilus to act
Fact
The story of the deal spreads
Like a thousand birds released from a net.
A burst of flight then a breaking up into
Detail and innuendo.
Every bird finds a perch
Whether or not it deserves a place
In what’s reported.
IV. 659–662
She has heard
Her women weep and say the right things
About being restored to her father
And how while they will miss her this will bring
Peace. She’s not really there.
In her mind she’s searching for him.
Trying to pin him down.
She can’t find him.
IV. 687–700
What is Criseyde worth when from Troilus?
Weeping is not enough
And beating her breast is not enough
So she tears at the brightness of her hair
As if plucking beams from the sun.
She wants to put out her light
And for her spirit to stay here with him
As she departs – in outline.
IV. 736–780
Criseyde alone
Pass
Why does he not claim her
Through love or force?
How can her plaint be sung
When so out of tune?
What voice could contain the full dimensions
Of the noise she is making?
Who has the words?
IV. 799–805
From whom nothing is ever kept
Her uncle shoves his way into her room.
She cannot face him
And pulls her loosened hair across her eyes
As if trying to find a door to close.
He can’t stand her pain – or the prince’s –
And wants to get out fast. He tells her
To rise, to wash her face. It’s all he has.
IV. 815–824
Hurt
How could any one person contain
Such agony?
So much torment there can be none left
Beyond this body.
All the world’s woe, complaint, distress
Anguish, rage, dread and bitterness . . .
I have been made to take it all in.
IV. 841–847
Criseyde protests
About her eyes purple rings
She asks what word he might bring.
That the court has agreed the exchange.
That her lover is beside himself
And needs a night with her
So they might find an answer.
Her gaze comes from a place so dark
He tries not to return her look.
IV. 869–889
Criseyde faces Pandarus
A blade
Shape yourself.
To see you in such disarray
Would pierce his heart.
Smooth your face.
Flatten your sharps.
Take his line.
Press to him.
IV. 925–931
Pandarus continues to instruct Criseyde
He finds consolation in philosophy
What makes what happen?
Take a man in a chair. He knows he sits.
We who see him sit can say it
’s true
And was so meant but what if
It had been foretold and did not happen?
What if his life was the chair and it remained unmade
In the realm of the tree?
IV. 960–1078
Troilus sits
The consolation of his friend
She is not all you were made for.
Remember the years you did not know her
And were content. I have just seen her
And looking at you now must say
You do not feel half her pain.
Go when it is night
And make of this an end.
IV. 1093–1115, IF IV. 111
Pandarus reminds Troilus
They cannot speak for weeping
All she has been made to contain
Has forced such utterance
That what pours forth now is silence.
He holds a broken thing
And after a while arranges her
As if a mortician in search of the person.
Then he too lies down.
IV. 1135–1183
Troilus and Criseyde meet that night