A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry

Hecuba

80 A Face to Meet the Faces Hecuba Gail Griffin . . .and Zeus destroyed me not but is still preserving my life, that I may witness in my misery fresh sorrows surpassing all before. —Euripides, Hecuba A woman keening might mean anything. Other things than men and children may be lost, run over by the gods’ big truck, those eternally drunken drivers. What has dropped from me has fallen silent. I almost asked what I did to deserve this. That old song. Let’s say I wanted not too much but too little. Let’s say my special hubris grew inward, like a navel. I have given birth to nothing, I have tried to be a city. And when the strangers sent their gift horse, my gates swung wide like legs. Now it starts—feet first, then the creeping gray cold up the shins. It’s not all that bad, really. Next the crotch goes numb. There goes the womb, that bag of old news. So I am petrified. I might make a useful statue. You can tell a tale by me. Oh, I edify. In the wet slate cave of my chest, the rattle of a small stone. ...