A Secret Birth

     by Brett Rutherford

     After a Callimachus fragment, Aetia, 48

Three hundred Titan years old Kronos slept
while young Zeus and his enamor’d Hera
coupled without let-up, nights — and days, too!
Nectars narcotic they sent
     to the watchful and jealous father,
by the hands of garlanded Dryads,
and, from the lips of Iris, distracting
rumors of some trifles and petty strifes
whose answered he could delegate, then turn
his pillows over for another nap.

Then from Zeus’s labors
     and Hera’s womb’s machinery,
with clank and clatter,
     there came such a birth,
red-light the sky from pole to pole, a cry
as loud as a factory whistle, a smack
as of the first bright anvil, ever, struck
by the world’s first hammer, forged from ore.

Hera, whom Zeus hung upside down, cut cord
with her own sickle knife and cried the name
of their dear new Olympian:
“Hephaestos, the gods’ armory, be born!”