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
or 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."
