The happiness of Mary Shelley
A poem for three voices
Mary
I was no stranger to happiness
I knew it as I once knew
every bump
on the smoothness
of my lover’s skin
I was born under a lucky star
storms and portents
heralded my birth
I sprang, fully formed
from the union
of two matchless minds
A child of love and light
How could I be anything
but filled with promise
Victor
I have known happiness
in such abundance
that I could have drowned
in it, and God will forgive me
when I say
that I wish I had
when I was an innocent
child whose eyes
did not yet look
towards the stars
Monster
Have I known happiness?
Is it like the burning of ice
inside my mouth
as I convoyed across
the marzipan continent
the only wedding cake
I will ever have?
I think I knew happiness,
or something like it
in the moments
when I looked back
and saw his dark shape
emerge at my vanishing point
and in the early morning
when I left clues and riddles
little love letters to my god
Mary
I have known happiness
I knew it in the deluded moments
when I thought
that I could be accepted
as I am
I knew it
when I believed my father
would lay aside
convention, value my conviction
When I believed my father
would still love me
Victor
The spark of knowledge
is the phantom, the shadow
of happiness
Knowledge, I believed, was the power
of my life-force
Without knowledge
I would be deadened
but it is better to be dead
than to be damned
Monster
I knew happiness
I knew it in the deluded moments
when I thought
that I could be accepted
as I am
When I believed
someone could see past
my face, value my good acts
my heart
When I believed my father
could love me
Mary
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin
My very name mocks me
The names of my
much-loved, never-known mother
my father
who taught me everything
but would not be taught by me
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
My name
linked forever
with his
Victor
Victor Frankenstein
My very name mocks me
Victor of the stone of the Franks
My great Genovese family
a stone around my neck
I am no victor
I am defeated
Monster
I am the child
who died so soon
after leaving the womb
that I was never named
never mentioned
by the parents who have
no love left
in their hardened hearts
Mary
If you remain childless
you do not have to face
the horror
of the small life-force
snuffed away
watch the electricity
and animation
slip from their limbs
Is it better to have loved
and tried
and lost and failed?
Or is a child
a monster
rent from your womb
to bring misery
Victor
I am left only half a man
The creature, my doppelganger
took my reason
but I know he has no heart
for I feel it here
still beating
in my chest
my ribcage
holding it from cracking
Monster
If I were happy
I would be good
and if I were good
I would be happy
If I were loved
I would be happy
if I were not hated
I would be good
Jesus Christ, Saviour
If you were to cross Jesus Christ
and Adolf Hitler
perhaps Klaus Kinski
is what
you would get
One man
in a floral shirt
spotlit against black
You would not mistake him
for a fragile man
German is a language of orders
made for shouting
Even the good news
sounds ominous
In his voice
the words of Christ
are new, mad
revolutionary
*
A performance, a play
a sermon, a message?
Is he an actor, a saviour
a half-crazy doing a job?
Does he mean the words he’s saying?
He speaks of love
with hate
in his voice, of peace
with a slap
Stop him, and he will start over
at the beginning
‘Wanted:
Jesus Christ’
He starts over
and over
until you believe
he speaks the truth
