by Brett Rutherford
from Callimachus, Epigram 25
“Oh Sun, farewell!” the suicide
cried as he jumped off
the highest wall of the city.
So died Cleombrotus
and he went straight to Hades.
Nothing whatever
had gone wrong in his life.
His doting parents
were full of grief, and cursed
the evil star Catastrophe.
All this because he read
one book of Plato.
by Brett Rutherford
from
Callimachus, Epigram 27
and much too occupied,
to listen to lovers’ promises.
A good thing, since Calignotus swore
to love her better than any woman.
He swore, and now she’s gone,
while he walks out and about
on the arm of a wealthy boyfriend.
gone like a gnat at dusk,
or pining in some temple’s cloister,
of her they shrug and say,
“Who knows?” This time next year
her name will be erased for good,
a smudge on love’s calendar.
by Brett Rutherford
after Callimachus, Epigram 24
So who the hell is Asticides,
anyway? What's all the fuss?
A Cretan — need I say more?
A goat-herd, no less,
you know what they're into.
He vanished, it seems.
Not smart enough to chase one,
he let himself be carried off
by a desperate nymph.
You can just imagine
how desperate! So why
is his name brought up
each time some schoolboy
fails to come home at night,
"Ah, some girl has got him,
just like poor Asticides!"
This clown will be the death
of pastoral poetry. No more,
the pan pipes beneath the oaks
of Mt. Dikte, no more the odes
of Daphnis and the shepherds' life,
just hillbilly Asticides
crawling with fleas
a he-goat and a she-hag.
What is the city coming to?
by Brett Rutherford
after
Callimachus, Epigram 23
Read closely, passer-by.
That there was Battus,
whose father was the warrior
Callimachus, and whose son
was Callimachus the poet,
this stone attests. That one
led an army, and the other
conquered with pen and scroll,
should not surprise you.
Battus stands between
as son and sire, and when
the Muses beamed their eyes
upon a child who smiled
and did not look away,
they were his guardians,
not just in easy youth
but later, when his head
was bowed and gray.
Walk on, then. Now you know.
by Brett Rutherford
adapted from Callimachus, Epigram 43
By name, you accuse me,
and so, by name, Archinus,
I answer you:
if I left little poems
here and there for you to find,
I was decent about it.
Neither your name, nor that
of your family were impugned
by my obscure utterings.
If in my right mind
I serenaded you,
ten thousand blushes
befall both of us,
but as it was,
I came unwilling,
as wine and the love-god
forced me, one pulling me
from out my bed, the other
made me not ashamed
to stand there,
a gossip’s mockery.
Feebly, I sang;
trembling, I wrote.
If anyone listened,
they did not hear
for whom Callimachus
yearned. Once more
I scratched papyrus,
once more I waste
a lyric, it seems.
I kissed the doorpost.
I vanished just as
the moon rose up.
If this was wrong,
then so be it. I am
outed, and you,
you could do worse, you know.
by Brett Rutherford
Witches and pedophiles
in pizza-shop basements,
Elders of Zion
with bearded Protocols,
rapists at the border
demanding to work
as strawberry pickers,
space lasers igniting
the unswept forests,
teachers conspiring
to teach actual history,
oceans not rising,
mass murders staged,
voting booths tampered
and thermometers, too,
pythons and lantern-flies,
COVID and monkey pox
all hoaxes to frighten you.
So things untrue
are truer than things
that are.
And now, just now,
polio is back,
and Palin, too?
by Brett Rutherford
from Callimachus, Epigram XXXVIIby Brett Rutherford
The man who would be king
avoids high parapets,
hill-tops and cliffs,
lest one swift wind,
or an assisting hand
should tip him over,
a parachute, twice-checked,
is always in reach
of his small hands
when his private jet zooms
from place to place.
He dreams in cold sweat
of a long fall from space,
not to some placid sea,
but to the very spot
where a sink-hole opens
to receive him.
So eager is Hell
to have him.
by Brett Rutherford
From Callimachus Hymn 1, 1-16
If this is to be a hymn sung to Zeus,
then keep to the subject: the god himself,
the king eternal, mighty forever,
he in whose name we crushed the Pelagones,
who to the quarreling Olympians
stands as their judge and arbiters?
He of Mt. Dikte on the island of Crete?
Or he of our own loved Arcady
where sturdy Mt. Lycaeum claims his birth?
What am I to do (not libations two!)
since the one and only Zeus attends us?
My spirit is torn. Some hold for Ida,
others swear it must be Arcadia.
says “this,” he ever means “that.” Yes, a tomb
by those prevaricators was built up,
and offerings collected, you can be sure,
but what a cheat this is. Zeus did not die,
nor was he ever mortal, seeding myth.
upon a hillside in a brushy shelter,
a place so dense that neither wolf nor boar
entered to disturb his infant slumber,
nor would the Arcadian women hear
his cries as they descended for water
to the banks of Eileithyia. Sacred
the place is still, Titan Rhea’s child-bed.
to cleanse herself of ichor’d afterbirth,
and to bathe the newborn child of thunder.
…
by Brett Rutherford
From Callimachus, Epigram II
When I said, “Heraclitus, my old friend —”
you interrupted, “But he is dead!”
Then I stood thunderstruck. Of course
he died so many
years ago.
How far from Hallecarnassos
have his ashes drifted
now?
I heard a Nightingale begin
his shift. The sun had set,
just as we two so
many times
lingered and talked beneath this tree,
until the day had
faded and gone.
but its descendant
— O my heart!
O Nightingale, be still!
by Brett Rutherford
from Callimachus Epigram V
“Hey, Timon, thou spout of spite,
which do you hate more: the Light
of Day, or the Darkness?”
“Darkness,”
the dour one replied, “For there are more
of your kind where the sun never shines.”
by Brett Rutherford
after Callimachus Epigram IV
If after saying “farewell” to me —
not a good wish but a poison arrow —
you turn to my friends, and, laughing,
mock me when I am just out of hearing.
You have too many teeth. Hypocrisy
has its way with canines and molars,
and soon enough you’ll lose them all.
whose aches are near deadly, and which
they call, with bitter irony, “wisdom.”
by Brett Rutherford
from Callimachus Epigram VII
He thought to earn merit
from gods, and in the eyes of men,
by tending the grave of one
who was not his ancestor dear.
his father’s
second wife.
And what did he get
for his trouble?
and fell upon him.
His brains spilled out;
the flowered
garland
still in his clenched hand.
of she who hated you, hates on.
