Envy and Apollo (After Callimachus)

by Brett Rutherford

    After Callimachus, Hymn to Apollo

And Envy whispered
into Apollo’s ear,
“Who cares about the writer
     of mere epigrams?
What matters it that some comedian
     sends jokes into a thousand ears
         and laughter propagates
               like mushrooms gone mad
               in a spring sweat?
What matters is that someone swoons
    while playing a harpsichord
          of that high C’s bounce off
             the opera house balcony?

Give favor instead
     to only the grandest things:
arches imperial and gold pavilions,
fights to the death on an even bet,
treasures piled up beyond account,
and the kind of art that goes along
with a thousand-year reign.
Give favor instead to heroic sagas,
to lines that outlast
the tuning of the lyre,
to epics long-lined
and even longer-winded.
Embrace Hyperbole.
Bless nothing that’s not as big
as the world-girding Ocean.”

Apollo turned, and with one foot,
he stamped on Envy’s pretty neck,
just as he had once crushed
the mighty Python.
“Wide is the torrent wild
of the great Euphrates,”
the god explained
    to Vanity’s idiot daughter,
“Yet half its flow is silt and muck.
And not from any common flow
do priestesses fill Demeter’s bowl.
From one small stream
whose origin is a holy fountain
from there the best of waters come.

“Look here, at the world’s navel,
at the blessed spot of Delphi.
None come in chariots,
     but one by one, on foot,
         each must ascend and wait.
Do horns call out
     if something that calls itself
          a king arrives here? No!
Does some triumphal arch offend
     the sight of sea and cliff and sky?
Again, Envy, no.
That which is least, is best:
Greeks hurl their epigrams
as well as I my arrows.

Temples may come and go.
No glint of gold spells out
my name upon the pediment.
One Doric column suffices.