Dreams of Down Below

by Brett Rutherford

     Adapted from Meleager, The Greek Anthology, xvi, 213

I am looking forward
to the Underworld,
     really, I am.
Despite dim light,
cold drafts, and food
at best repulsive
(mushroom fare!),
love’s bitter arrows
go not there.

A good night’s sleep
is almost assured
without those torments
of futile yearning
after this one, that one.

Comparing notes,
     the lovers, great and small,
     will offer their hands
     in condolence. Poor
poet, what do I have
to boast of?

But what of those
     who have gone before,
     seething with jealousy,
     remembering bad nights
     and broken trysts?
Lovers, a cynic told me,
are housed on separate isles
from the dead objects
of their past pursuit.
A waving hand across
    ice floes in Acheron
are all one can hope for.

But is that so awful?
If death is just
    old age extended,
one could,
     despite the shivers,
read all the poets,
dispute, if able,
with the philosophers
who stumble about
saying, “Does this exist?”
“Do I, a shade, exist?”

Musing on this, I dreamt
of a scholar’s afterlife,
surcease of sex and sorrow.
But then came Demeter
in her proud chariot.
“I come for my daughter,”
she told me. “Each year
on the appointed day
I take her home to Mt, Ida,
and oh, the flowers!”

I stood dumbstruck.
My idle dreams of peace
were shattered, as
the pale figure passed me
and red-eyed Hades
howled “Persephone!”
with all the agony
of a bereft bridegroom.

If that dark god
to whom all come
quakes pillars of Hell
for the one he cannot
possess, then truly,
as above, so below.
The lord of the dead,
and all the dead,
are Love’s prisoners!