Hubris

by Brett Rutherford

Adapted from Meleager, The Greek Anthology, xii, 101

Myiscus, one morning after,
dismisses my library
with a bored glance,
tugs at my sleeve
as I write a poem.

“Do you love me better
than those old epigrams
you collect and copy?”
he asks me, inserting
his question mid-stanza.

I put the stylus down.
“I lived for poetry
     until you struck me down.
Now I am not so sure.”

He laughs. In him,
some demon triumphs,
as if to boast,
     “See what I’ve done.
The proud scholar
     is now debased. My foot
is on his neck.
I’ve furrowed his wise brow
with lines of worry and jealousy.”

“Don’t be so smug,”
I caution him.
Nobody makes anybody
do anything
    unless some force compels.
Eros makes even Zeus
     do things his wife
would never countenance.”

Smugly, the boy leaves me
to go off to discus practice,
while I return to poetry.
This line,
     was it mine?
or did Callimachus,
as drunk with this love
as I am, say it already?