Those Little Love-Notes

 by Brett Rutherford

     adapted from Callimachus, Epigram 43

By name, you accuse me,
and so, by name, Archinus,
I answer you:

if I left little poems
here and there for you to find,
I was decent about it.
Neither your name, nor that
of your family were impugned
by my obscure utterings.

If in my right mind
I serenaded you,
ten thousand blushes
befall both of us,

but as it was,
I came unwilling,
as wine and the love-god
forced me, one pulling me
from out my bed, the other
made me not ashamed
to stand there,
a gossip’s mockery.

Feebly, I sang;
trembling, I wrote.
If anyone listened,
they did not hear
for whom Callimachus
yearned. Once more
I scratched papyrus,
once more I waste
a lyric, it seems.

I kissed the doorpost.
I vanished just as
the moon rose up.
If this was wrong,
then so be it. I am
outed, and you,
you could do worse, you know.