Some knowledge of Greek Mythos and the Iliad required for a more comprehensive reading of this piece.
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Dead Conversations and Conversationalists
"Ah, poor beauty, I can still feel your mortality decaying about me. Scratched and pierced by bracken, masticated by slavering beasts, wretched beauty to be pitied. Lie us here now, you and I side by side; so flawed as to be perfect. Loved, so dearly loved, were we not? Betrayed by love and all the promises made in the secret shadows of unnamed sanctuaries.
"How were we to know? How were we to know that love alone could not build a world? Oh, but the blame comes swiftly now, silent beauty. I fear we loved too strongly, too courageously, too selfishly. Never such a love before, we may very well declare! It shall never be forgot; our names will never be forgot.
"Who knew that it would burn all we loved to the ground? Firebrand, indeed, pathetic beauty.
"Oh, but look and see who comes here weeping and remorseful. Do you see her? Fair as dawn and fresh as spring dew, such a one enraptured us once, frail beauty. Ah, but too late for her, as well. We found others, and yet we returned, foolish beauty. She rejected us when we sought her help. Let her suffer now. Let all women wail until they bleed their temptation and treachery out. Would that we had never known their difference from men.
"Shall I taunt her a bit, rage at her for being the final betrayal?
"No, perhaps not. I cannot find within myself the strength or the ambition for such a petty task. Fleeing from the dubious embrace of the Winged Herald is a far better endeavor, I should think, for my own peace.
"My, what rivers she pours over you, tender beauty! Well, she is the only one left to care now, is she not? The only one who knows of our place of rest amid this horrible, eternal twilight. The Achaeans killed our father, beloved beauty. Our sisters are defiled and in chains. Poor mother, a mad, mad thing!
"Of course, our family loved us, but would never mourn us, spiteful beauty. They lacked the courage to kill us many times over. They should have smothered us in swaddling clothes. They should have let Deiphobus skewer us through the heart when he wanted to. Or let the people, now dead, throw their complaints and fears in stone upon our heads. Cowards! They would fight armies, but they would not fight us alone!
"Wait, softly now, tortured beauty. I know of one who would mourn had he been alive. The one who loved us best and hated us most cruelly. Bravest man, bravest brother!
"He loved us too well…
"All honesty, all piety was he, but he left us for his own cowardice. He would not allow himself to live to see his wife taken in chains or the city fall. He refused to live for us when we needed him with such fervor, with such intensity to remain by our side.
"Only for him would we be mistress. Only for him would we whore ourselves. We let him take his perjury from our flesh; let him put villainy and suffering between our spread thighs. We bred incorporeal Anathema with him oh-so willingly.
"That is why I show such reluctance for Hermes to come find me. That is why I leave you all alone, horrid beauty, upon his importunate calling. You have no more worries, but mine have only begun. Tartarus awaits, I assure you. Bound to the bronze wall thrice circumscribed by darkness and tortured by Tisiphone's wicked serpents, I will wait until my transgressions deliquesce.
"Again and again! Faithless love! Criminal love! Internecine adoration!
"Hold now, mute beauty, what does this sobbing creature do? Ha! She thinks to give us burial through the showers of her eyes and her poor lamp. One would do better without the other, I assure you.
"My perilous beauty, I must take to my heels again. If my ears do not deceive me, that is the jaunty tread of the Winged One come for me. Rest well, sweet beauty, and let our oldest love do what she will. I will converse with you again.
"Unless Hermes proves the craftier… Unless she gives you burial and gives us peace.
"Farewell, old house of flesh. Our days as one have long since passed."
End Notes:The 'she' mentioned repeated in the above passage refers to Paris' first wife, the nymph Oenone. I have used the myth of Paris wandering back to Ida in search of a cure for Philloctetes' arrows as the template. According to certain translations, after being refused her help, Paris wanders through the bracken and trees until the poison rots his heart. Oenone, repentant, finally finds his body and burns it upon a pyre. She then throws herself into the conflagration, thus committing suicide.
For all of those who have not the bent for literary subtleties or did not read the summary carefully, Paris' shade/cognizant essence is holding a one sided conversation with Paris' corpse. Hence, all references to 'beauty' as the one to whom this conversation is directed is the corpse. It's dead. It doesn't talk.