Dialogue (Harmodius and Anacreon)

by Brett Rutherford

1

Harmodius, to Anakreon:

Unread, your latest scroll

its seal unbroken, too.

At noon, I send my servant hag

to hurl your scroll,

wrapped up with this one,

over your garden wall.

How passers-by will laugh

to see a withered crone

asking the neighbors

which gate belongs to you.

They’ll say Anakreon

now plunders graves

as well as cradles.

Shamed now perhaps,

you will stop those ardent letters.

Don’t put my name in your poems.

Don’t ask me to read them.

Don’t pay to have them sung

at your next banqueting.

You’re nothing but trouble for me.

You could be my uncle,

my father, even —

so no more loving glances, ever!

2

Anakreon to Harmodius:

Cupid’s bent arrows cannot return.

Cruel one, our secret is out.

My passion is over

before its egg could hatch.

I did not name you, or confess it.

“Which one,” they asked, “would Zeus,

or the fool-poet Anakreon, love best!”

You huffed about, and blushed, and preened

so much that all my readers put

two and two together and linked our names.

You did not mind my admiration

you did not mind my poems, even.

Now that your brass-faced vanity

refuses me and scorns my gifts,

I am not bound by modesty.

Henceforth I wear the badge of love

not in the heart-held lining

but on the sleeve for all to see.

Let people judge who is the baser fool:

I, the unloved lover, or you,

the worthless object of a great Desire!

— Revised 2026.