Times Four

 by Brett Rutherford 

     after Callimachus, Epigram 53

Rival: if young Theocritus,
who is mine if only
for his many poems,
hates me, as you say he does,

four times as much
shall you hate him
and shun his company.
You hate all poets anyway.

But if Theocritus loves me,
as he protested earlier,
let that be multiplied by four,
to the heat of a burning star.

As Zeus had Ganymede,
fair-haired and ever-loving,
Theocritus, whose face
is fringed with a young man’s
first beard, shall be mine.

The gods will it.
I say no more.