by Brett Rutherford
after Callimachus 59
As seagulls roam
the roaring sea, so sails
Leontichus, so seldom home
he hardly knows
his many
children.
’T was pity then,
that moved him
when an unknown sailor’s
corpse washed up
upon the mangling rocks.
Naked and nameless,
half his face gone,
they found him.
Leontichus took up
the pitiful remains
and put them here.
This stone his gift
not just for one,
but for all whom the sea
drowns and discards.
by Brett Rutherford
after Callimachus,
Epigram 53
Rival: if young Theocritus,
who is mine if only
for his many poems,
hates me, as you say he does,
four times as much
shall you hate him
and shun his company.
You hate all poets anyway.
But if Theocritus loves me,
as he protested earlier,
let that be multiplied by four,
to the heat of a burning star.
As Zeus had Ganymede,
fair-haired and ever-loving,
Theocritus, whose face
is fringed with a young man’s
first beard, shall be mine.
The gods will it.
I say no more.
by Brett Rutherford
after Callimachus, Epigram 46
After his friends warned him,
“Callimachus is after you.
Don’t give him anything.
Leave town, give
no one
a forwarding address.”
“I am not like that. Look not
that way upon my features,”
left town on June 20th. Then on
the holiday, what was it? the 10th
of the month following,
my door, unknocked, flew open.
The ox came to the plow
without a summons.
Well, well. A bow
to Hermes, the god
of sudden inspiration,
well done! Just twenty days
between the wish
and the arrival.
by Brett Rutherford
after Callimachus,
Epigram 45
Don’t say I wasn’t warned,
old friend Menexenus.
No sooner had I said
I was done with doting,
along comes Pan, the sneaky one,
on a mission from Dionysius
to stir inside my ashes
a hidden fire.
I thought I was beyond
distractions. A wall
was I, yet undermined
by hidden streams beneath.
So now I tremble, head
to foot, with dread,
that this unworthy lad,
a rent-boy if ever I saw one,
a purse-snatcher or worse,
dread that he slips in
where my heart is empty,
and something like love
floods in to overwhelm me.
Friends should rescue friends
who totter at the edge of folly.
by Brett Rutherford
after Callimachus, Epigram 44
He sat among us bleeding,
and we knew it
not.
With sighs, the stranger
nearly choked at
dinner.
The wine he took, and swallowed,
would not stay
down,
the garlands he
wore —
as though he had just been
at someone’s
wedding —
shed onto paving-stones
their one-day faded petals,
roseate.
he might have
told us!
Burned by the gods he was.
He had loved
where he was not
supposed to,
and then he
had to flee.
my mirrored self in him I see.
by Brett Rutherford
after Callimachus, Epigram 42
Am I half-dead
or am I half-alive?
I know not which;
my soul is split
and I am heavy
with longing. Love’s end
is a small slice of Death,
so it is hard to tell.
Something between my
head and breast
has gone hollow.
Is there someone
I should be thinking of?
Is it one among those boys
I see too often already.
Have I not cautioned them,
as they circle my table —
the flirts! — “Don’t let me
fall in love with you!”
sits here like a ghost,
giving out lovesick glances —
where, and to whom?
Knowing not who
has made me feel this way
is certain madness.
If this be not
a fore-taste of the tomb,
show me a face, at least,
or let me be put
into the market for stoning.
by Brett Rutherford
after Callimachus, Epigram 33
Vain are the ways
of venery.
The hunt, I mean to
say.
The sportsman
scales hills,
friend Epicydes, in
search
of what is hidden
there.
Hare in the snow,
the track of roe,
the burrowing fox.
The colder it gets,
the more he enjoys it,
the rarer the catch
the better.
Yet should he
chance
upon an arrow-
wounded beast or boar,
felled by another’s
darts,
he will not touch it.
The hunt I know,
the other venery,
takes place
in street and
alley,
strolls in the park
at night,
or anywhere at all.
My arrow, the random glance
bold and in full daylight
can light upon one
beauty
amid a herd of his fellows —
Oh, to pursue what
flees
is best for me,
while what accosts
me,
offering,
I scorn to touch.
by Brett Rutherford
after Callimachus, Epigram 32
Poor lad, have you eaten?
Good Heavens! You!
Wasted away to nothing,
made hollow-cheeked by lack
to skin and bone, I knew
you not, poor boy,
Cleonicus of Thessaly!
I swear by the burning sun
I mistook you for another
who idles here sometimes
in need of a meal or more.
we have a common woe.
The doom that once withered me
was wizened you — the gods
have played cruel tricks on us,
the same humiliating jest
on thee and me. Drink up!
have ears, and windows eyes,
nothing in Alexandria
escapes the gossips. I need
but whisper the cursèd
name
Euxitheus. He played you too?
You’ll need a month of dinners
to vanquish your despair. You too,
like me, looked in those eyes
and fell into the same abyss.
Come, Cleonicus! With wine
and open heart, be free!
Now, over there, look at that one!
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?
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.
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.
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.”
my cousin, may I dare to say?
What of the world down there?
We still alive are craving to know.
— A ghost of few words.
to some blessed isles?
“An old wives’ tale. Forget it.”
And what of Pluto?
Does he judge?
and human striving, undone.
Have you nothing good to say?
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.”
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.
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?
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.
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.
