Matters of Taste

by Brett Rutherford 

     after Callimachus, Epigram 30

Refrains, anaphora, endless
retakes of the Trojan War
in tedious detail, such ways
as poems turn in on themselves,
dining on old regurgitations —
such things annoy me.

Likewise the city streets
that circle back
the same one hundred faces
day after day
in one’s own neighborhood.
Where is the joy in that?

 Like something foul I dread
the company of serial seducers
and inconstant lovers.
Some wells are for the connoisseur
of water; some are for swine.

Some are content
     with what is common,
          low, and cheap.
These things I loathe.

I can be fooled. Take
Lysinias here.
Is he not, oh, better than fair?
But no sooner did I say “fair”
than someone echoed “fair”
outside my window way
and beckoned him by name,
and, having purse and good looks,
he took the boy from me.