Emily Wilson
April 18, 2014
Here is a perhaps unfinished poem I wrote today about Helen, partly inspired by reading Ruby Blondell's great book on the character; partly by trying to come up with a translation of Euripides' "Helen" that gets the tone right; and partly by life.
I am the woman with the golden hair.
The one you're looking at -- but I'm not there.
You think I'm not quite human. Maybe not --
you don't know who I am or what I want.
I'm wanted. But it seems like an excuse.
She wanted something else, and so did Zeus.
I'm staring in my mirrors. What I see
is beauty, but no truth. It isn't me.
I like the clever ones. Odysseus
is absent, just like me and just like you.