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. 

Burnt Offering

 

by Brett Rutherford

Anacreon, to Harmodius:

About that letter, the fervent one,

the one you hinted you’d sell

unless I enriched your coffers —

you mocked its shaky autograph,

and threatened a scandal —

I know your threat is false.

Last night in my sleep I saw

your hands on a crumpled scroll,

the thrust toward a sputtering lamp,

the tiny screams as my words,

my awesome and unrepeatable vows,

my praise of your unworthy beauty,

collapsed and withered in a blue-green flame.

You brushed the ashes from your gentle arms —

they scattered, mingled with dust motes,

rode a moonbeam in a moment’s leap

toward ghosthood, then dissipated.

Only one moth, before its suicide,

dipped in the ash and shared

one final taste of my missive.

No Phoenix rose, the earth

did not open to swallow you,

and your disdainful triumph

did not diminish the cosmos.

Yet he who burns love-letters

offends the Gods.

You dare undo my holy madness

with your little hecatomb

of paraffin and oil?

They will come back to sting you,

my salamander syllables.

Try and love anyone now! Your sunken cheeks

and pale complexion will drive all away.

All will know you are pursued and haunted.

You will wish you had kept the living scroll

when you see how Love, an ash-faced Fury,

comes back from Acheron,

a broom-hag to drive

your other suitors off,

nightmare’s bedmate, engendering

alarming sores and bruises,

leaving you spent and exhausted

as though a nest of incubi

used you to train their young.

You gloated first, I had composed

a shameful letter, and I would pay.

But when you learned

my missives wind up

in the best anthologies,

you gloated again

to burn it.

In vain,

your destruction of evidence.

You see,

I always keep a copy.

— Revised 2026.