Property of Zeus

by Brett Rutherford

     After Meleager, The Greek Anthology, xii, 68

A fool said: “Spare the pretty ones,
for they are property of Zeus.”
Does he, the son of Kronos, require
more than his thousand-year
     Ganymede, than whom
no mortal youth can be
     more handsome?

I want Charidemus.
I told him so. Some fool
advised him to seek only Zeus
as his lover, the prize so high —
good food, and life eternal.
But the price, boy:
     a boyfriend as old
     as the mountains of Atlas.

How vain the lad becomes.
He goes about now,
     chlamys flapping,
exposing his attributes
    to the blue sky above.
He wears an eagle pendant,
   the little flirt.

Elsewhere I’d better turn
my attentions, the busybody
advises me. With all
my other troubles piled up,
     do I need cloudbursts
     and thunderbolts, too?

At risk, I follow him about.
Courting his little ascension
he might go off some cliff
or get his eyes pecked out
by lesser avians. Dare I,
if an eagle lifted him
     on giant pinions,
grab hold, pull back,
aghast and weeping,
hot tears on my empty hand
my only reward? I fear
I am not so brave as that.

Zeus, take him then! Let’s
get the waiting over with.
Glut your eyes on beauty.
And having taken one, oh,
Charidemus has brothers,
cousins, all of one mold.

Or, if the sophist is right,
you’d might as well scoop up
the whole town square’s
ephebes, young loiterers
of a Saturday afternoon
with nothing better to do
than bask bright-eyed
in the blue-white day?
Take all, greedy god,
till none are left
but the lame and homely.

Consider, King of Heaven,
how I am denied ambrosia,
     and a poet, no less.
Harvest the earth
    of all its beauties,
and no more poems will come!

You want hymns,
     encomiums, prayers
        and rituals?  Fine.
In return, let each of us
cherish and keep his own
    Charidemus!