At Homer's Grave on Ios

 

by Brett Rutherford

     Adapted from Antipater, The Greek Anthology, vii, 2

What, no marble tomb? No arching eagle,
no piled up swords and spears, no line
of weeping maidens or expiring youths?
No harbor, no city, no temples high
on clifftop to catch the gold of sunrise?
See, stranger, this craggy rock of Ios,
covers the scant bones of Maconides’ son,
he of the mighty voice, one envied by
the Muses themselves. A dozen islands
claim him, but only here he breathed his last.

His sightless eyes perceived the nod of Zeus;
the doings of kings and men, love’s madness,
and of Olympus, too, where gods contended
and human blood stood in for ichor blue.
His ears heard all, from dove-flight to war-cry
as Ajax held back the Trojan advance
and made men shake and vomit with terror.
His stylus did not hesitate to tell
how the flesh of Hector was stripped away
as Achilles dragged him thrice around Troy,
a freight of gore behind Thessalian steeds.

Visitor, this grave is no counterfeit.
This sorry height, desolate, is honest.
This is a small stone, you charge. I answer:
one slab just high and wide enough to hold
these words, suffices. Men come from nowhere,
and nowhere but here is where his bones rest.

(Peleus, the hardy spouse of Thetis,
warrants no more than just such piled-up stones
on Ikos, an insignificant isle
if ever I saw one. Go there yourself,
and see if the old dead be not astir
when you recite the lines of Homer and
the sky leans cloud-ears to the sea to hear.)