Helen of Troy at Home in the Florida Everglades

Please, have a care for the ladder; come up into my palace.
Sorry there's only the one room to see, but I keep so little these days.
I don't want to be conspicuous.
Besides, what I need comes to me as I need it –
Prerogative of an Immortal. Learned tricks. Little gifts from my father.

You want to know how and why I came here,
To your hot, miserably wet place of weeds and toothed dangers?
It's the last refuge of so many living things, precious rarities of earth.
Would you not consider me one of these?
I have had enough attentions in my lifetime.
There are so many questions about me that it's almost flattering:
Did I love Menelaus before Paris came;
Did I help the Greeks win the Trojan War after Paris died;
Did I go contentedly back to Sparta with Menelaus;
Did I miss the whole affair and sit quietly in Egypt, unnoticed?
Did I die in my sleep in my own bed?
History. So many accounts, so many wrong.

And then there is my story,
The Story of Helen, egg of Leda and Zeus,
Cursed with the blessing of Beauty,
Driven through lands and time by men's eyes and desires.
Fighting. The incessant cries of men fighting.

Think of Clytemnestra, my half-sister –
her son Orestes murdered her
After she trapped that terror Agamemnon in the one place
Where he went unguarded: the waters of the bathing pool.
Perhaps she, too, had consulted oracles, seen signs.
To speak frankly, I think she needed no help –
She'd had so much time to plan her big day.

I enjoy the irony of it:
My father Zeus presented himself to our mother Leda
In the semblance of a swan. Vicious birds, swans.
Therefore I can hide by acquiescence, flow and float,
Survive by darting eyes, springing flight, and strong webbed hands,
Show bright plumage or comport the most discreet of feathers.
You could even say I have defeated all my enemies,
If living my life out to its tenuous extremities is success.
I had no sons, no daughters, no progeny:
Why pass down as birth gifts War and its Death?
I have many guardians,
Old friends who tenuously cling to their sky or mountain peaks,
Out-dated to you, subsumed into a malleable memory by you.
Still, it does not matter to me if you believe in anything,
Or if you do not.

You see this moment only an old gray woman.
You look disappointed – well, we must change that!
You have come so far, and I do not wish to appear rude:
I shall give myself the pleasure
Of showing Helen to you.

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