At Homer's Grave on Ios

 

by Brett Rutherford

     Adapted from Antipater, The Greek Anthology, vii, 2

What, no marble tomb? No arching eagle,
no piled up swords and spears, no line
of weeping maidens or expiring youths?
No harbor, no city, no temples high
on clifftop to catch the gold of sunrise?
See, stranger, this craggy rock of Ios,
covers the scant bones of Maconides’ son,
he of the mighty voice, one envied by
the Muses themselves. A dozen islands
claim him, but only here he breathed his last.

His sightless eyes perceived the nod of Zeus;
the doings of kings and men, love’s madness,
and of Olympus, too, where gods contended
and human blood stood in for ichor blue.
His ears heard all, from dove-flight to war-cry
as Ajax held back the Trojan advance
and made men shake and vomit with terror.
His stylus did not hesitate to tell
how the flesh of Hector was stripped away
as Achilles dragged him thrice around Troy,
a freight of gore behind Thessalian steeds.

Visitor, this grave is no counterfeit.
This sorry height, desolate, is honest.
This is a small stone, you charge. I answer:
one slab just high and wide enough to hold
these words, suffices. Men come from nowhere,
and nowhere but here is where his bones rest.

(Peleus, the hardy spouse of Thetis,
warrants no more than just such piled-up stones
on Ikos, an insignificant isle
if ever I saw one. Go there yourself,
and see if the old dead be not astir
when you recite the lines of Homer and
the sky leans cloud-ears to the sea to hear.)

At the Walls of Troy

 by Brett Rutherford

Have you found Troy? Colossal walls, impregnable,

once fashioned here to rise and fall a dozen times,

fell for their last, gate opened in fatal error.

Do your hear clash of arms, the din of bronze on bronze

(oh deadly iron, you slept then, as yet unor’d

beneath the blood-red earth, unknown to Hephaestus!)

How the chariots rolled, crushing the spent arrows,

driving the gore-spewn breastplates and skull’d helmets down

into the mire and muck of the ungrass’d field,

rolled right on in, to triumph after sleight’s success!

Dare you to stand without a shudder, where a god —

— Yea! even a goddess — reeled and bled out ichor

as Diomedes thrust and thrust impudent metal

with the clear sight of reason — the perfect warrior

granted of all men the vision to mark and wound

the very gods themselves as they sat invisible

beside their chosen heroes. Apollo stopped him:

woe to the hand that ever again hurled a spear

at an Olympian! If ever a warrior

asks why the gods should condone war, avert your eyes!

Did you find that high parapet from which the Greeks

hurled Priam’s last infant son to a bone-crush ruin

so that no son’s son would one day raid fair Hellas?

Do cries still echo here of the wail of the Trojan

women — some doomed to the swift sword or self-murder

vainly offering their jewelry as ransom —

some chosen, war’s prize, for transport and servitude,

already-raped captives whose usurp’d wombs erase

the name of Troy? A place with all its women gone

is a place for dogs and vultures, without a name.

Have you found Troy? ’Mid all this dust and ruin,

can you raise one ghost from all the thousand warships

to ask him the why of this past and present misery,

the cause for fighting and dying so far from home?

Agamemnon hears you not. Menelaus went pale

when stories of the great war were told in Sparta.

Some of that scattered gray ash might be Patroclus.

You, with bowed head, recited from Homer and wept

as ghosts gave shout and answered why they went:

To see again the radiant face of Helen.

8/21/2021

At the Grave of Homer

by Brett Rutherford

On Ios the itchy-haired boys,
picking at head-lice like monkeys,
hectored to death the dotard Homer
as he stumbled sea-ward, hands up
to catch sun's east-west wandering,
ears to the waves to ken the echoes
and tides that guided him daily
from arbor to sea-park and home
again. "Old Man," they taunted,
"You know the gods. What color
is the hair of Aphrodite? How tall
was Aias when he stood in armor?"

Calmly, he answered them: "Bright
as spun gold. Tall as a ten-year oak."

Greek and Latin Poetry -- Free Books to Download

From The Poet's Press Links Page, here are links to my recommendations for free books you can download of Greek and Roman poetry. Everyone needs a Greek slave, and a Roman master.

GREEK AND LATIN POETRY

Amos, Andrew, ed. Gems of Latin Poetry. A collection of poems in Latin from various eras (including British poems composed in Latin). An excellent bilingual resource with the original Latin, prose  or verse English translations, and commentary. Odd items include a poem attributed to Julius Caesar, a Latin poem condemning Milton's works to be burned at the stake, and Latin love poems addressed to Lucrezia Borgia. A treasure trove for those searching obscure and interesting Latin poems to translate or paraphrase.  From the Internet Archive in PDF and other file formats. 

THE CLASSICS, GREEK AND LATIN: The Classics, Greek & Latin; The Most Celebrated Works of Hellenic and Roman Literature, Embracing Poetry, Romance, History, Oratory, Science, and Philosophy -- A handsome series of books published a hundred years ago, edited by a transatlantic group of scholars and translators, intended to present the great Greek and Latin classics to the general reader. The volumes are a mix of prose and verse translations. Here are the volumes that contain poetry:

• Andrew Lang's prose translation of Homer's Iliad. PDF and other formats from The Internet Archive. Lang's style is arcane, and does not compare well with Samuel Butler's prose version (see below). 
• Andrew Lang's prose translation of Homer's Odyssey. PDF and other formats from The Internet Archive. 
• From the same series, a compendium of Didactic and Lyric Poetry from the oldest Greek poets, including Hesiod, Callimachus, Sappho, Anacreon and Pindar. 
• A collection of some of the best-known Greek Dramas, including Prometheus Bound (translated by Elizabeth Barrett Browning), Antigone, and Medea. 
• Prose versions of The Poetry of Virgil, including The Georgics and The Aeneid. 
• The Works of Horace, translated into English prose. 
• Here is the pinnacle of Latin poetry in the volume titled, Amatory, Philosophical, Mythological. This volume includes selections from Lucretius, the great philosopher-poet, the satirist Catullus, the magisterial Propertius, and the first four parts of Ovid's Metamorphoses. 

Richardson, Leon Josiah. A Guide to Reading Latin Poetry. This brief, practical guide explains Latin meters and helps the beginner learn how to read Latin aloud, and how its classical meters work. A stodgy old book, but very useful. 
SAMUEL BUTLER'S PROSE VERSION OF HOMER'S ILIAD. Published in 1898, here is Samuel Butler's fine translation of The Iliad into clear and readable prose. This is an elegant rendering, highly readable, and far enough from our own time that Butler's everyday English sounds just slightly removed and grand.
THE RETURN OF STATIUS. Perhaps it is time for the scorned Roman poet Statius, author of the epic Thebaid, to make a comeback. He is the Stephen King of Roman poetry, full of extremes, the product of Rome at its peak of power and flowering of decadence: "Who can sing of the spectacle, the unrestrained mirth, the banqueting, the unbought feast, the lavish streams of wine? Ah, now I faint…" Here is the Heineman bilingual edition of Statius as a starter on this voluptuous poet. For a taste of the 18th century take on Statius, here is a 1767 English translation of The Thebaid Vol 1, and The Thebaid, Vol 2, whose introduction includes some comments on the critics' disapproval of Statius's unrestrained writing.