we call her Joy

PSYCHE:
The female gods are a difficult sorority.
They didn’t want me.
I was locked in a basement
and bludgeoned by Aphrodite
while the other gods –
Hera, Demeter – looked on.

They shaved my head;
she disfigured my face.
Why should I need beauty,
little flame of mortal soul –
surely what matters
is within, pretty girl?

What I remember of it now
is her unsayable force
I was tenderised like meat
her right hook, her uppercut
my neck snapped back –
dull explosions in my skull

pinwheels of blood
up the walls, a confused shame
at my mortal body’s mess.
Once she’d worn herself out
she gave me impossible tasks:
divide this chaff of dust and grain

and poppy seeds –
a million minute specks –
into discrete heaps;
gather wool of shining gold
from homicidal sheep;
fetch water from death’s precipice.

Finally Zeus gave me ambrosia
so I was made immortal,
all my mutilated, bleeding pieces,
which Eros gathered up in silks
and hurried home to earth,
our baby somehow delivered

in perfect, rosy health.
We call her Joy.
We keep away from court,
live quiet. My husband
responds to summons
as seldom as he can.

I have flashbacks and bad dreams.
Sometimes even though I’m immortal
I cannot breathe.
On a still day when the meadow grass
or the pine trees stir
I think she’s here

to take my daughter
and I drop in terror
my frightened soul elsewhere;
a tremor moving through me –
laughter which is not laughter
but the furthest reach of fear

Fiona Benson’s most recent book of poems is Ephemeron, 2022

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