The Shards of Gods

by Brett Rutherford

Theognis, high in honor
among the archaic Greeks
served Apollo, and thus
he pledged his patron:

“Lord, child of Leto, son
of the lightning-bearing
Zeus of Olympus, I kneel
at your feet and beg
the company of Muses.”

So, too, Theognis
loved every lad whose face
bore any semblance
     to Apollo,
abjectly, in the face of scorn.

“First breath, last breath,
and every breath between,
I consecrate to you,” [1]
he swore to the god,
an adoration worth
a thousand poems at least.

But as for me,
     I serve a fickle deity:
fleet Hermes who comes
and goes as he pleases,
the one who seldom arrives
by daylight,
but rather in dreams,
in ever-deceptive
masks and guises.

Apollo may bless the poets
who labor patiently
at measured epics. I wait,
instead for Hermes,
the avatar of sudden inspiration.

And, just as Theognis pined
     for noble youths
more bent on games and girls,

I spent my youth
     on fair-haired orphans,
     outcasts and dreamers,
my fellow exiles and reprobates.
Not one of them had a home
     to go to; most
had been written out of wills,
     turned out-of-doors
to their own devices.

Oft times I sleep
     with window open,
so that the god
     who makes house-calls
between his errands
may leave me the blossom,
root, or branch
for my next poem,

so too the strays,
scruffy and poorly shod,
may enter at random
when least expected,
in need of caresses.

And thus, through gods
and the shards of gods
on beautiful faces,
the night holds out
against the burning day.

 NOTE:

1. The Theognis quotes are paraphrased from his Elegaic Poems, I, 1-4.