Matters of Taste

by Brett Rutherford 

     after Callimachus, Epigram 30

Refrains, anaphora, endless
retakes of the Trojan War
in tedious detail, such ways
as poems turn in on themselves,
dining on old regurgitations —
such things annoy me.

Likewise the city streets
that circle back
the same one hundred faces
day after day
in one’s own neighborhood.
Where is the joy in that?

 Like something foul I dread
the company of serial seducers
and inconstant lovers.
Some wells are for the connoisseur
of water; some are for swine.

Some are content
     with what is common,
          low, and cheap.
These things I loathe.

I can be fooled. Take
Lysinias here.
Is he not, oh, better than fair?
But no sooner did I say “fair”
than someone echoed “fair”
outside my window way
and beckoned him by name,
and, having purse and good looks,
he took the boy from me.

 

Catastrophe at Cyrene

 by Brett Rutherford

     after Callimachus, Epigram 22

Some days the sun
should refrain from rising;
some nights the moon
should turn its face in shame.

At morn, we filed into
the graveyard. Ashes
of Melanippus we consigned
into the tomb intended
for his parents. At dusk,
the grieving Basilo died
of self-murder. The pyre
that had burned her brother
would take another too
before its embers had faded.

At home, proud Aristippus
staggered with double woe —
first Malenippus,
     and now Basilo! —
a childless father now.

All of Cyrene wept
and its citizens shuddered
to pass his desolated house.

 

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.”

 

 

 

The Little Plaque By the Garden Way

 by Brett Rutherford

     after Callimachus, Epigram 18

Oh, where is Crathis? We,
her Samian girlfriends,
have looked everywhere.
We miss her never-ending
chatter, the gossip, the tales!

Look here! Look there!
Part ways and meet again
at the garden overgrown
where sometimes she
plays hide-and-seek.

 The market stalls?
    No one has seen her.
Nose in a book
     in the scribes’ alley?
(Nay, no syllable of Homer
has ever passed her lips!)
The Temple of Isis?
     Oh, no! Not that!
I looked everywhere.
Just let me catch my breath.
Some boy has got her!
No! No! where is the chatterbox?
Where? Where? Where?

 Look down! O, which
of you can read this?
A little plaque, not stone,
but carved in common wood.

From Crathis, it says.
Read this and know,
I sleep below.
A sudden fever took me.
Come back. Bring flowers.

 

 

The Cenotaph

 by Brett Rutherford

     after Callimachus, Epigram 20

This mausoleum, unoccupied,
waits open-doored for Lycus,
gone on a merchant trip to Aegina.
He, of Naxos, and well-versed
in the seasons, went anyway
when Orion and Arcturus bode ill.
He drowned. Ship sunk,
Lycus inside the rotting hulk
of shattered vessel, now sells
his wares to the canny octopus.
Or worse, his bird-picked visage,
floats eyes-up in a knot of weeds.

Decorum forbids these thoughts
be put on stone, so just
his name above the lintel
must suffice. Wild wind
cascades the oak leaves in,
then out, of the empty tomb.

Step in. Remember him,
and if a soft murmuring
comes up, the breeze
and swaying myrtles amplify,
until a goat-cry issues
from your unwilling throat,

it is a warning to mariners,
of the two Kid-stars
in flickering Capella, whose fall
presages the storms that kill.

 

The Poor Man's Gravestone

 by Brett Rutherford

     adapted from Callimachus, Epigram 28

Having little, I humbly lived.
I asked for no monument, but
others who loved me, paid for one.
I had a point of pride, just one:
I never did a dreadful deed,
nor can anyone say
I injured them.

In proof of this I vowed:
O Earth, if I, Micylus,
have spoken well
of any evil thing,
deny me your light and blessing,
bar me and the kind guardians
who would lead me down
to the better shades below.

To refrain from evil
when it pays so well
is no small thing.

 

The Statue Speaks

 by Brett Rutherford

     from Callimachus, Epigram 26

Stranger, your passing glance
diminishes me. Hero am I;
my weapon is drawn; beneath
my foot the serpent peeks out.

 No less a man than Eetion,
born of Amphipolis, has set me here,
beside the doors of this, his home,
a small bronze in a small
vestibule.

                    No mount have I;
my sword is made, not for
the downward-looking cavalry,
but for the upward lunge.
I am no less a warrior for that.

 Although of Trojan descent,
Eetion is not a man
of equine disposition.
“A horse outside my door?”
he scoffs. “Greeks made us
such a one betimes,
and look where that got us!”

 

The Librarian's Lament

Callimachus was the head of the Great Library at Alexandria.
I expanded a tiny epigram to let him boast a little about his day job.

THE LIBRARIAN’S LAMENT

by Brett Rutherford

     adapted from Callimachus, Epigram 34

“But you haven’t any money.”
What kind of bedroom talk is that?
Listen Menippus, in the name of gods
and the Graces, don’t talk that way.
Would you tell me my own dreams
or blow my breath back into
my nostrils? It’s not as though
my purse had nothing in it
but nail clippings and navel lint.

I am the one in charge, the one
you ask questions of, when you
come begging for wisdom
at the library’s high desk.
And not just any library,
mind you, the Big One.

Here in the great city
of the Ptolemies,
every living author knows me,
solicits my help
in finding rare manuscripts.
I alone know
where everything is.

All Alexandria honors me
as author already
of some seven hundred
works. Does that seem poor
to you. By narrow bed
and simple furniture
you dare to judge me?

You do not tell the lame
they are crippled, or say
to the blind man, “Look here!”
It’s just that bitter to me
to have my lack of wealth
thrown back at me,
as though I had shamed
my ancestors. How crude,
and how unworthy.

Wake up in joy
in the bed you fell into,
with the one who will have you,
or do not wake at all!

   

Too Much Philosophy

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.

 

 

Swear Not Your Love

 by Brett Rutherford

     from Callimachus, Epigram 27

 The gods are too smart,
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.

 And as for poor Ionis, the girl,
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.

 

The Goat Boy's Fame

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?

A Father's Gravestone

 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.

Those Little Love-Notes

 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.