Oh, Give It Up

by Brett Rutherford

     Adapted from Asclepiades, The Greek Anthology, v, 85.

You, virgin still? Oh, why?
Small dam against a torrent,
frail barricade defying love,
why grudge it when a line
of suitors would un-Sphinx
your riddles and reduce
your silly girl talk to a sigh
of most sweet surrender?

If I may be so rude:
Just think on Hades, dear,
and its loveless eternity.
There, no one will give you
a second glance. In Acheron,
upon its acid river shore,
one lies not down for love
but to lament, in ash and dust,
the bygone days one wasted.

Diogenes the Cynic, Dead

by Brett Rutherford

     After Archias, The Greek Anthology, vii, 68

Weeping is your delight, O boatman of Hades
Tears from above are like wine to you
as you convey the dead
upon Acheron’s undrinkable waters.
If but one tear descends
with my name upon it, give heed
and add me to the manifest
for this night’s passage. With all
the dead weight of war and famine
you bear, my little bulk is as nothing.

I’ll not be left behind.
Call me “Diogenes the Dog”
if you wish to diminish me
even further. I do not mind.
Baggage have I none:
my staff, my smelly cloak,
this seldom-used wallet,
in which one obol,
down here as heavy
as a lump of lead,
that one thin coin
you are obliged to take
as my ticket. What’s here

is all I had above,
unless you count memory
of sky and sea, harvest
and the occasional
kindness of strangers.

True, most who knew me
wished me here. A shrug
greeted the news of my passing.
The best of my sayings
already twist this way
and that on the tongues
of rascals and old wives.

Here, the coin.
Let’s get on with it.
I left nothing in daylight,
anyway. Take it, boatman!

Three Spinning Sisters

by Brett Rutherford

     After Archias, The Greek Anthology, vi, 39

From the dark we come;
to the dark we go.
We were three of Samos
Euphro, Satyra, and Heracleia,
daughters of Xuthus and Melite.

To gray-eyed Athena
we have bequested these
unworthy offerings,
the implements with which
we staved off poverty:

The spindle, weary
of its long service making
fine, spidery thread,
and its long distaff;
the musical comb
that pulled the close-weave cloth
together, and this worn-out
basket from which the wool,
wadded and piled up high,
passed from one sister’s hand
to another’s.

Our eyes have failed,
our fingers stiffen,
and so we gather up
this last offering,

with which a poet,
taking pity, added
these suppliant lines.
Some of our work
is already in Hades:
shrouds we have made
for rich and poor.

From the dark we come,
to the dark we go.
Down there,
if asked,
we will mend and sew.

Unlucky Number

by Brett Rutherford

Who would have thought
that the unluckiest digit
was the tiny number Two?

Pythagoras said One
was unity or god,
a thing impossible to break
into constituent parts,

whereas the dreaded
number Two spelled out
diversity and struggle,
disorder and strife,
the root of all evil.

The Romans,
respecting always
the wisest Greeks,
were in accord.

Hold up two fingers
or stop your count
of anything at Two,
was like an evil eye,
or spitting at heaven.

Romans began the year
with One, the month of Mars,
then shuddered, cold,
through all of Two,
the month of Pluto,
when every chill wind
seemed to issue from Hades.

On Day Two of Month Two,
the Manes, unquiet shades
of ancestors neither blessed
nor damned, the walkers
at the edge of Hades, blow

up on night winds to haunt
the Roman graveyards,
unearthing bone and urn,
knocking about the little
household gods on the hearth,
engendering migraines
and mis-shapen births.

Walk on that day,
two fingers up on left,
two fingers up on right,
avoiding monuments,
not saying the names
of the departed. Eat
sparingly and take no salt,

pass water in all four
directions, and fail not
to complete each sentence
once begun, lest you lose
your tongue altogether.

At sunset, chant, Dis Manibus,
Dis Manibus, and pray
that no unquiet ghost answers.

Until the next day's dawning,
sleep not as two
entwined with wife or lover:

On the night of the Manes
each one must sleep alone
just as the dead ashes sleep
in their gloomy vaults below.

Go to Elysium

by Brett Rutherford

Good folks,
god-loving
(or so they tell themselves)
get a free pass
beyond the Styx,
and to Elysium go,

the Blessed Isles,
or one big isle
depending upon
which poet you believe.

There Rhadamanthus,
gives those surviving souls
who made no trouble
for others, or died rich
with suitable gifts
for the temple, haven.

What Rhadamanthus
provides, is more
of everything mortals
most wanted. Endless
sports, and concerts live
where they sway to and fro
to the beat of drums,
the thwack of guitars

electrified. Horses,
dogs, cigars, and whiskey
abound, forests of deer
and guns to shoot them with,
strip joints, pole-dancing
virgins, a big casino
for the high rollers.

Mob boss and pimp,
gun-dealing casino owner,
glad-handing, wink
and a nod to whatever
comes, Rhadamanthus
knows where his bread
is buttered, Elysium
the number one destination
for departed souls.

Once they get over
the nonexistence
of their deities,
all settle in. The games,
a season ticket,
an all-star cast
at the stadium.
Who can complain?

But as for me,
I book my fare
on the slow boat
to Hades. My cat,
a creature of great
discernment, is there,
and shall adorn my lap.
I shall read out
one thousand poems,
calming the howl
of hell's eternal winds.

Dreams of Down Below

by Brett Rutherford

     Adapted from Meleager, The Greek Anthology, xvi, 213

I am looking forward
to the Underworld,
     really, I am.
Despite dim light,
cold drafts, and food
at best repulsive
(mushroom fare!),
love’s bitter arrows
go not there.

A good night’s sleep
is almost assured
without those torments
of futile yearning
after this one, that one.

Comparing notes,
     the lovers, great and small,
     will offer their hands
     in condolence. Poor
poet, what do I have
to boast of?

But what of those
     who have gone before,
     seething with jealousy,
     remembering bad nights
     and broken trysts?
Lovers, a cynic told me,
are housed on separate isles
from the dead objects
of their past pursuit.
A waving hand across
    ice floes in Acheron
are all one can hope for.

But is that so awful?
If death is just
    old age extended,
one could,
     despite the shivers,
read all the poets,
dispute, if able,
with the philosophers
who stumble about
saying, “Does this exist?”
“Do I, a shade, exist?”

Musing on this, I dreamt
of a scholar’s afterlife,
surcease of sex and sorrow.
But then came Demeter
in her proud chariot.
“I come for my daughter,”
she told me. “Each year
on the appointed day
I take her home to Mt, Ida,
and oh, the flowers!”

I stood dumbstruck.
My idle dreams of peace
were shattered, as
the pale figure passed me
and red-eyed Hades
howled “Persephone!”
with all the agony
of a bereft bridegroom.

If that dark god
to whom all come
quakes pillars of Hell
for the one he cannot
possess, then truly,
as above, so below.
The lord of the dead,
and all the dead,
are Love’s prisoners!

 

Interrogation

      Adapted from Meleager, The Greek Anthology, vii, 470

Q.

Tell the stern one on the bench above,
he who hath no eyes but hears all,
what name you call yourself, and who
and of what place your father.

 A.
I tremble before thee, judge of all!

 Q.
Speak freely. He is but one of many.
Few they are, who meet the owner
of this forbidding and barren place.

 A.
Well, then, I was — and am — Philaulus.
Eucratides, my father, from Kos —
if he my father was — who knows?

 Q.
A cautious and a wise reply! What
livelihood took up the bulk of years?

 A.
These hands have never pulled
a plough, nor grappled the ropes
that hold a sail aloft. Instead
I tried to be wise among the wise —
a teacher, that is to say.

Q.
Full-haired your head,
well-trimmed, your beard.
A full count have you
of fingers and toes. How, then,
did you depart from life?
Did old age creep up upon you,
or some sudden sickness, or fall? 

A.
From what the sages taught me,
I mixed the Cean potion of death.
Of my free will I enter Hades.
The boatman’s coins I had,
and suitable prayers, I hope,
preceded me.

 Q.
                      So, were you old?

 A.
Ah, very old. All whom I loved
with the fire in my body, are gone,
and my world had gone to grayness.
All that I had to teach — subsumed
it was in newer sciences. It was time.

 Q. Wise the law that permitted this.
Wise is he who places no burden
of care on those around him.
Until a certain time,
     you must wait here,
till that of earth
     that still weighs down
the soul, passes. Worthy the life
you led in line
     with wisdom and reason.
Welcome, brother, to Hades!

 

 

 

Necromancy

 by Brett Rutherford

     from Callimachus, Epigram 15

Speak, stone! Does Charidas
rest beneath you?
A groan from the witch,
a deep gong sounding,
and then the deep answering:

“Mortal, if by Charidas
you mean the son
of Arimmas of Cyrene,
I answer as summoned.”

 Charidas, my countryman,
my cousin, may I dare to say?
What of the world down there?
We still alive are craving to know.

 “It’s dark a lot.”
                         — A ghost of few words.

 Is there a way upward
to some blessed isles?

“An old wives’ tale. Forget it.”

And what of Pluto?
     Does he judge?

                             “A fable!”

 Then all is for nothing,
and human striving, undone.
Have you nothing good to say?

 “How we get by down here
is a tale you would not savor,
but if it is good news you wish,
you can buy a whole ox to eat
for a copper penny in Hades.”