Reader, I

was, according to Virgil, always a fickle, unstable thing. Woman. Wyf. Merger of wife and man. To indicate: not-girl. Not-yet-claimed, not-yet weeping. And aren’t they often weeping? The mother, tearing her hair out, running toward the battle lines, filling heaven with her womanly wailing. Dido watching those pale, bulging sails leave Carthage. Creusa—first wife—grabbing at Aeneas’s ankles as he flees his son, his house? He relents. Allows her to join at a good interval behind. And get this—he doesn’t look back. Only once he’s skirted Troy, left behind the equestrian pyre, the serpents swallowing boys whole, once he’s arrived at the mountain gates, only then does Aeneas turn. Alas, he goes. He didn’t think to look for her. Sure, he grieves. Returns to the scalding city before finding her ghost. But never did he turn. This is the forest primeval. The left-behind wives and the wailing, those empires built on our shades. Dactyls upon dactyls of bridal beds aflame, sad wraiths, lustrous oceans of tears. As if woman were a climate, a misdirection of wind. Dock unmoored. Alas. And yes, Aeneas, too, weeps. In the underworld, Dido wandering the Fields of Mourning, and he wants to know—he wants to know if he made her do it, bring her body down, on top of his sword. Was I the cause? he asks. He asks her that. This fickle thing. But she’s so sturdy here. Look at her. She is granite she is dim moon she is dark grove is sea unchartable. She will not return. She will not return his gaze.