Street Scene

by Brett Rutherford

He knew these streets by heart,

and could, if blinded, find his way

through every winding lane

of the old city. Some things

were ever the same, others

as sudden as meteors,

such as the kohl-eyed woman,

just now, who offered him

a basket of figs and serpents,

lid lifted just far enough to show

forked tongues and amber eyes.

One lane, off to the east

of the Scribes' Alley, was empty

(was he that late?); another,

too near the sailors' dens,

was vacant, too. One turn,

then two, and then a third

and then he leaned to look

where two young men

squatted like beggars

in Alexandria's

most infamous alley.

One spoke, in Attic Greek

as pure as poetry,

"Hail, old man, if man you be.

You may choose between

the two of us, for no one else

is left of our brotherhood.

"Dionysius we serve, for silver."

The other, in coarser tone

coaxed him impatiently,

"What, why so choosy?

He doesn't want so much,

the pretty one, while I,

I charge a stiffer fee,

if you take my meaning.

The math is simple,

if you have a purse:

He charges by the night;

I, by the inch."

Callimachus,

out far too late,

or far too early,

judging by either moon or sun,

just shook his head and muttered,

"Neither!"

The Sleeper

 by Brett Rutherford

     after Callimachus, Epigram 64

Is your bed soft, Conopion?
Do you sleep well, and dreamless,
while I crouch chill in misery
on your cold porch? Not even
one thin blanket covers me.

Yes, I would keep you awake,
and not unpleasantly. Cruel one,
you feel not a jot of empathy,
as I shiver for your company.

A neighbor walks by and notices
my toss-and-turn on marble,
nothing but my own clothes
between me and bruising.

He shakes his head and mutters,
“Another fool! You waste your time
with this professional virgin!”
And then I think of your thin frame,
black hair that will soon enough
show veins of gray, and the day
when no one looks upon you twice.

Whose porch will you then sleep upon?

 

 

The Friend of Orestes

 by Brett Rutherford

     adapted from Callimachus, Epigram 60

What kind of man
would love Orestes?
Who, knowing his friend
must his step-father kill,
and then his mother,
would hand him the knife
and say, “Go do it?”

Such was Pylades.
He soothed the brow
of Orestes through all
his madness, slept next
to him in blasted wood
and caverns unlit,
flinched not
as Furies screeched,
and Hades’ judgment
hung over him.

A happy man, Orestes:
despite his madness
he clung to his friend
and never asked of him
the ultimate gift
of the inverted sword,
never once said,
“Friend, end my life!”

I had such a friend
and did not know it.
For all I know,
I had many Pylades,
but seldom saw
who was seeing me,
whose hands outstretched
would have eased my days.

I played one role
in but one drama.

The Shipwreck's Gravestone

 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.

 Ocean, be kind!

Times Four

 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.

 

He Comes Around

 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.”

 And so Menecrates, who said,
“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.

 

Suspicions

 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.

Walking, Wounded

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,

 and when he left us,
     the garlands he wore —
as though he had just been
     at someone’s wedding —
shed onto paving-stones
their one-day faded petals,
     roseate.

 O what a tale
    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.

 Being a thief of hearts myself,
my mirrored self in him I see.

 

Knowing Not Whom I Love, or Why

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!”

 What part of me, then,
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.

 

 

The Hunt

 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.

  

The Love-Lorn

 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.

 Come, have a drink. Ah,
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!

 How did I guess? If walls
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!

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,
a childless father now.
All of Cyrene wept
and its citizens shuddered
to pass his desolated house.