The Shipwreck's Grave

by Brett Rutherford

     Adapted from Archias, The Greek Anthology, vii, 278

Why here, within the sea’s
ear-shot, have you buried me
in this godforsaken place
where the tide crashes
on the rocks below, and winds
echo the wrath of Poseidon
endlessly? Low surges
that never sleep, the groan
of tides coming in
and going out,
the hiss of salt spray:
it's all enough to drive one mad
for even though I am dead
in distant Hades, I hear it all.


If foot-treads come
and someone offers flowers
I would never know it,
for the ocean’s roar
drowns everything.

Don’t waste a prayer here:
Words are blown back
into your throat,
your utterance a moving mouth
without a thought behind it
for all I know.

My name was Theris,
and all you know of me, it seems,
is that the waves delivered me,
an eyeless corpse, fish-ridden,
after my father sent me
with dowry and serving maids
for an arranged marriage.

Now on this brine-salt hill
whose soil sprouts no flowers,
right next to the sea that killed me,
some stranger saw fit
to dig this grave,
and with a paper’s shroud
deposit my remains
into this noisy cacophony.

Oh, be assured, I joined
the lonely dead in Hades,
but here I walk about,
alone, unspoken-to,
two howling sea-shells glued
to my agonized ears.

Until the ocean dries
and the sea becomes
an object of literature and legend,
I shall have no repose.