Walking, Wounded

by Brett Rutherford 

     after Callimachus, Epigram 44

He sat among us bleeding,
     and we knew it not.
With sighs, the stranger
     nearly choked at dinner.
The wine he took, and swallowed,
     would not stay down,

 and when he left us,
     the garlands he wore —
as though he had just been
     at someone’s wedding —
shed onto paving-stones
their one-day faded petals,
     roseate.

 O what a tale
    he might have told us!
Burned by the gods he was.
He had loved
     where he was not supposed to,
          and then he had to flee.

 Being a thief of hearts myself,
my mirrored self in him I see.