Go to Elysium

by Brett Rutherford

Good folks,
god-loving
(or so they tell themselves)
get a free pass
beyond the Styx,
and to Elysium go,

the Blessed Isles,
or one big isle
depending upon
which poet you believe.

There Rhadamanthus,
gives those surviving souls
who made no trouble
for others, or died rich
with suitable gifts
for the temple, haven.

What Rhadamanthus
provides, is more
of everything mortals
most wanted. Endless
sports, and concerts live
where they sway to and fro
to the beat of drums,
the thwack of guitars

electrified. Horses,
dogs, cigars, and whiskey
abound, forests of deer
and guns to shoot them with,
strip joints, pole-dancing
virgins, a big casino
for the high rollers.

Mob boss and pimp,
gun-dealing casino owner,
glad-handing, wink
and a nod to whatever
comes, Rhadamanthus
knows where his bread
is buttered, Elysium
the number one destination
for departed souls.

Once they get over
the nonexistence
of their deities,
all settle in. The games,
a season ticket,
an all-star cast
at the stadium.
Who can complain?

But as for me,
I book my fare
on the slow boat
to Hades. My cat,
a creature of great
discernment, is there,
and shall adorn my lap.
I shall read out
one thousand poems,
calming the howl
of hell's eternal winds.

Things I Never Dreamt I'd Eat

by Brett Rutherford

Duck feet, sea slugs,
lotus root dry
     from winter mud,
eggs lost and found
inside a clay pot
     a "hundred years,"

baby eels, slimy
     (aphrodisiac?),
tree-bark fungus
afloat in soup,
shark fin, dried
     octopus snack,

Old Pock-Marked
     Mrs. Chen's
tofu (the scholar's
rocket fuel),

mysterious red
sausages, pork
belly, bok choy,
a stinky fruit
(durian) milkshake,
noodles transparent,
tentacular,

the act of faith
that no one you know
has, after a thousand cuts,
wound up inside
today’s pork bun —

all these I know,
but I draw the line at
stew of a black dog,
and jellyfish.

Two Scholars Atop A Cliff

by Brett Rutherford

Fu Bao Shi paints them:
two scholar friends
who seldom agree
on weighty matters,
friends now
and forever regardless.

One faces the painter.
Perhaps he is glad
to be seen there
facing another cliff
we can only imagine.

The other looks off
into the spiky peaks
whose forested slopes
play hide and seek
in perpetual fog.

Posed at right angles,
neither scholar sees
the same reality;
neither can know
how Fu sees them
seeing. Fu cannot see
what either scholar
perceives.

 
Black ink,
brown washes.
One nature,
many mountains.
Each man alone
in a universe
of seeing.

Dreams of Down Below

by Brett Rutherford

     Adapted from Meleager, The Greek Anthology, xvi, 213

I am looking forward
to the Underworld,
     really, I am.
Despite dim light,
cold drafts, and food
at best repulsive
(mushroom fare!),
love’s bitter arrows
go not there.

A good night’s sleep
is almost assured
without those torments
of futile yearning
after this one, that one.

Comparing notes,
     the lovers, great and small,
     will offer their hands
     in condolence. Poor
poet, what do I have
to boast of?

But what of those
     who have gone before,
     seething with jealousy,
     remembering bad nights
     and broken trysts?
Lovers, a cynic told me,
are housed on separate isles
from the dead objects
of their past pursuit.
A waving hand across
    ice floes in Acheron
are all one can hope for.

But is that so awful?
If death is just
    old age extended,
one could,
     despite the shivers,
read all the poets,
dispute, if able,
with the philosophers
who stumble about
saying, “Does this exist?”
“Do I, a shade, exist?”

Musing on this, I dreamt
of a scholar’s afterlife,
surcease of sex and sorrow.
But then came Demeter
in her proud chariot.
“I come for my daughter,”
she told me. “Each year
on the appointed day
I take her home to Mt, Ida,
and oh, the flowers!”

I stood dumbstruck.
My idle dreams of peace
were shattered, as
the pale figure passed me
and red-eyed Hades
howled “Persephone!”
with all the agony
of a bereft bridegroom.

If that dark god
to whom all come
quakes pillars of Hell
for the one he cannot
possess, then truly,
as above, so below.
The lord of the dead,
and all the dead,
are Love’s prisoners!

 

Bringing Bad News to Niobe

In classic Greek tragedy, violent acts always occur offstage, and actors or the chorus must relate to those on stage, and to the audience, what has happened out of sight. Meleager’s longest poem seems to be a demonstration of such a speech, in an imaginary drama about the fate of Queen Niobe and her family, all of whom are killed by Apollo and Artemis after she insults Leto (Latin, Latona), their mother. Boasting of her 14 children, Niobe calls the mother of Apollo and Artemis “nearly childless.” Ovid tells the gruesome story of all the sons and daughters felled by arrow shot from the sky in his Metamorphoses. Meleager would be engaged, it seems, in coming up with the worst news ever brought by a single messenger. He assumes that the Queen is in her palace, and that one poor soul has to narrate everything – and then, even in the midst of his speech, more horrors pile on. This tour de force, packed into the fewest possible lines, prompted me to expand the text, and to cast my version in blank verse so that it sounds like a speech from an English drama.

BRINGING BAD NEWS TO NIOBE

by Brett Rutherford

     Adapted from Meleager, The Greek Anthology, xvi, 134

Daughter of Tantalus, O Queen of Thebes,
never was a messenger so charged with woe.
From your stern gaze, Niobe, I avert
my head; on bowed knees, trembling, I falter.
Can I say all that must be said to you
without a blinding dart or lightning bolt
reducing me to ash? O Queen, rend now
your robes to rags, hurl down the diadem
and howl as never a mother before!

Your sons are dead! What? All of them, yes all!
That glance! Would I were mad as you think me.
Come to the balcony and see it all,
what Thebes in horror witnessed in bright sun:
the arrows plunging down, one angry god
and his equally angry sister, hot
to avenge their mother’s honor, drew bows
from yon low-hanging cloud. What gods, you ask?
I cannot say it above a whisper —
Apollo and Artemis, none other.

Come quickly, then. Your daughters already
flood the field with cries. The horrified crowd
parts way for them. O lady, come not here —
hold back — oh, smiting gods — the girls as well!
They knelt in lakes of blood, and now they fall.

O Queen, where have you gone? Is it the King
you have gone to grieve with? I saved that bit
for later. Upon the sword he fell, seven sons
bereft. Now, what is that below? The Queen
amid the carnage, arms up imploring
the fatal heavens. One daughter leans hard
upon her bosom, another at her feet
expires. Some, praying to Leto, clasp hands
in fervent begging. No use! The feathered
shafts continue falling, seven sons dead
and seven daughters. O find me a sword
that I may fall upon it. O History,
will thy Muse permit the telling of this?
Must I live on to be the one who writes
on bloody parchment this dark tale of woe?

All witness on the red ground below, yet
who can compass both the effect and cause?
What plagues and sorrows will come after this?
And as for Niobe, still as a stone,
what will this hard retribution teach her?
Speak, Queen! Your mouth is open, but no cry
comes forth. Gods! What do my eyes behold now?

She is a stone. Crown gone, disheveled her
golden hair, hands out before her visage,
fingers spread fanlike as if to block out
the gaping wounds, the heart-blood spurting still
from where the unerring arrows chest-plates
pierced, skulls riven in two, dead eyes agape,
as fourteen new souls sleet down to Hades.

Frozen she is, tongue, lips and teeth, wild eyes,
torrent of torn robes and unloos’d sandals,
all to marble transformed, except one tear,
that, seeping up from a mineral spring,
flows rivulets upon the mother’s face,
and in renewing itself, becomes a font.

Weep, Niobe! I shall repeat your tale
to any Muse who wishes to listen.
I shake. I wield no stylus and no lyre.
If Gods do this to us, what hope is there
that brutish men will rise above the beasts?

 

 

 

Midsummer Respite

by Brett Rutherford

     Adapted from Meleager, The Greek Anthology, xii, 128

The night is too short.
Pipes pastoral,
     be silent!
Let Daphnis stay
in mountain
     hideaway,
asleep on a hill-top.
Summon him not
at the call of Pan,
that goat-molester.

Lyre of Apollo,
     be silent!
Long dead and gone
is Hyacinthus,
fallen his laurel
     crown, fled
the zealous wind
who felled him.

Let Daphnis
and his kin delight
the ever-watchful
nymphs at hand.
Keep Hyacinthus
a fond memory
in Phoebus's eye.

Give this summer night
over to human lovers.
Stir not young men
to supernatural yearnings.

My Dionysus -- no,
     not the god! --
let this poor Dion wield
love's commanding staff.
The night is too short.
Grant us the space
to woo and win
with poems, wine
and mortal vows.
Grant us one
unassisted kiss
in midsummer silence.

Either-Or

by Brett Rutherford

     Adapted from Meleager, The Greek Anthology, xii, 86.

Aphrodite it is,
   soft, curved
     and ever-smiling,
     who lays forth
liquid flame,
compelling men
     to women’s charms.

Eros, it is, tender,
     tall, eluding
one day and giving
     the next,
the North Star
    of male-to-male
     affection.

What is my Pole,
    my inclination?
How shall the world
turn me, and to whom?
Boy Eros in Hermes guise,
or Cypris, bride and mother?

Whom will I see,
     curled up
beneath my morning
     blanket; whose
hair will drive me mad
     as my fingers run
through the abundant curls
of the exhausted sleeper?

     She, or He?

In dreams I’ve heard
the Morning Star sigh
as Aphrodite admits
she cannot outpace
her mischievous son.
Regarding me,
    she shakes her head
       confessing,
“Eros, the arrogant brat
     has won again!”

 

In A Name

 by Brett Rutherford

     Adapted from Meleager, The Greek Anthology, xii, 81

What parent would name
his child in such a manner? —
Look, here comes Dionysus!
To be the butt of jokes,
provocative glances, drunken
jibes, and dangerous
assumptions is bad enough —
no blame to the young man
if he also possesses beauty,
eyelashes as fatal
    as the net to the fish.

Love-sick with self-deceit,
imagining souls bound
by a night of passion,
fellow victims, assist me!
You know the bitter-honey
     taste of rejection.
Pluck out my heart —
plunge it in cold water,
or, better yet, into
the colder jolt of a snow-bank

save me, for I have dared
    to look on Dionysus.
A river plunge, a waterfall,
    an iceberg ride
in Ultima Thule, anything!

You, laughing, passive witness
of youth and beauty,
help me to stop
     Love’s venom.

O Dionysus, to sleep
    with you is bliss.
But to wake with you?
I fear my heart
cannot contain it.

Hubris

by Brett Rutherford

Adapted from Meleager, The Greek Anthology, xii, 101

Myiscus, one morning after,
dismisses my library
with a bored glance,
tugs at my sleeve
as I write a poem.

“Do you love me better
than those old epigrams
you collect and copy?”
he asks me, inserting
his question mid-stanza.

I put the stylus down.
“I lived for poetry
     until you struck me down.
Now I am not so sure.”

He laughs. In him,
some demon triumphs,
as if to boast,
     “See what I’ve done.
The proud scholar
     is now debased. My foot
is on his neck.
I’ve furrowed his wise brow
with lines of worry and jealousy.”

“Don’t be so smug,”
I caution him.
Nobody makes anybody
do anything
    unless some force compels.
Eros makes even Zeus
     do things his wife
would never countenance.”

Smugly, the boy leaves me
to go off to discus practice,
while I return to poetry.
This line,
     was it mine?
or did Callimachus,
as drunk with this love
as I am, say it already?

 

A Contest of Eyes

by Brett Rutherford

     After Meleager, The Greek Anthology, xi, 92

i

Why, despite his
apparent indifference,
does my head turn
to follow Hicetas
till he is out of sight?

The problem is
that I have seen his eyes.

My goose is cooked.
He’s nobody, really.
How can the lesser
bring down the greater?
Glue-traps on trees
capture the wild dove,
admittedly,
     but by and large,
sheep do not eat wolves,
crows do not catch scorpions,
ash does not smother fire.

Love cooks and stirs
everything. The soul
in love is upside-down.

I roast in beauty;
my soul runs down
into the fire.

ii

My eyes betray
my soul’s intent,
forsaking peace.
Like hounds, they burst
from out their sockets,
chasing the beloved.
And he, bird-lime
on his fair limbs,
catches the glance
and will not let it go.

Winged eyes discover
the wolves in the fold,
who, having been seen,
go skulking off. The crow,
whose eyes blink
sideways, taunts
the scorpion’s steady gaze
and turns away.

The pitying sky’s
tears fall and smother
the flame beneath
     the crumbling ash.

 

iii

No love at first sight
for the sightless.

What if we made
a merry bonfire
of these steaming orbs?
Trusting no more
the trickery of vision,
what if we crawled about
like errant crabs
in the receding tide,
selecting at random touch
whom we should love?

Could it be worse
than this cruel lottery
of colliding visions,
eyeballs circling
in long ellipses
like lost comets?

 

iv
Taking no lesson
from Oedipus,
far-knowing Tiresias,
or from the woe
of a Spartan bridegroom
begetting warriors
in total darkness,
I must accept my fate.

I see, I am seen.

My complaints are petty.
Hicetas, hold my gaze,
for in Hades, I am told
all eyes are averted.

  

After the Shipwreck, Love

 by Brett Rutherford

     After Meleager, The Greek Anthology, xii, 84-85

The shipwreck’s vow to love,
on being rescued, the first he sees
if foiled by fickle Eros. A week
he languished, windless, idle,
and then for days storm-tossed
not only side-to-side but
upside down among the fishes;
ship dashed to splinters, all
of his fellows food to sharks;
he on his first voyage, alone
lived and came to shore.

A sight he was, barefoot,
and all but naked.
As it was dawn,
no one saw him.
Sheep he heard, but saw
    no shepherds.
Laughter of women came
where laundry lay on stones,
but when he approached
they had all fled somewhere,
as though some great bear
or a hungry Cyclops
     threatened them.

He chose among
the abandoned clothes
what modest raiment seemed
proper for a stranger’s entry
into the walled town.

The vow he made
to love whomever first
greeted him, came back
to his mind’s ear,
his own voice promising
against the howling gale.
Poseidon had spared him,
but what had Eros in store? 

“So be it,” he said.
“Be it crone or cripple,
beggar or brothel-maid,
I cast my lot to fate.”

And, lo! the first closed door
to a walled garden flew
open as if a wind willed it,
and there stood, bathing
from shoulders to feet
in fountain spray,
an eighteen-year ephebe,
chlamys and cap dropped
at water’s edge.

As quick as it had opened,
the door swung shut.
The lad laughed:
their eyes had locked
for just an instant,
enough for each,
if he willed,
to love the other
once and forever.

He went to an inn
across the way,
where ardent carousers
already at their wine
adopted his cause.

“As strangers come
from Zeus,” one said.
“here, take the last
coppers I’m carrying.
Another here will
    offer you lodging
and work enough
for strong hands.”

Cups raised,
    the Dionysian god
they praised.

One touched
the sleeve
of his tunic.
“That is my weave
you are wearing.
No matter — keep it.”

Now bread and oil,
lentils and meat
we put before him.
Once three wines full
he ventured to tell them
of that love oath which
the sea’s lord and Eros
bound him. “That house”
he pointed, “is where I saw
the most perfect being
in all the universe.
Pray, tell me the name
of the young man living there?”

Stone silence. Two faces
went red. Others choked down
whatever it was
     they wished to say.

“That house?”
     one asked him.
He nodded.
     All laughed.

“Welcome to Kos,
    and to ‘The Arrow’!”
the inn-host replied.
Arms reached
and went around
his shoulders.

“All day we sit and drink
and wait for that door
     to open.
We are a fellowship
     sworn to no jealousy.

Whom he chooses,
     we honor.
He walks as a godling
     among us.
Good luck to you, stranger!”

 

 

Burning Up

by Brett Rutherford

     Adapted from Meleager, The Greek Anthology, xii, 74

Cleobulus, dear friend,
this island of Kos
has really done me in.
The surfeit of children,
     bounty’s blessing,
has led to an overflow
of lusty, idling,
     superfluous young men.

I came here for peace of mind,
but what am I to do?
They come up to you
with those impudent faces,
dark eyes both mocking, imploring,
don’t you dare and will you please,

their eyebrows and lashes
     weird hieroglyphs.

So close to death am I
from all these love-burns,
I’d might as well carry
an urn beneath my arm.
Each time one smites me
with his glances, there
I can put my cinders,
ash and bone-shards
as I walk along.

When all that’s left of me
is a bronze urn
with little human feet,
smoldering, do me
the favor of a prompt burial.

But first, I pray you,
Cleobulos my confidant
immune to this kind of love,
take my plain urn —
letting no lads claim
a particle of trophy —

ignoring the hoots and howls
of mockery, take this
plain urn, soak it
three days in wine
(the redder the better)
and on that heart-dyed
verdigris inscribe my name
and just these words:

DRINK ME:
LOVE’S GIFT
TO DEATH.

 

 

 

Super Powers

by Brett Rutherford

     Adapted from Meleager, The Greek Anthology, xii, 63

The young men, smitten
at seeing themselves
mirrored in clear water,
are more than doubled
in beauty and power.

Their chests swell,
shoulders arch back,
biceps taut, fists
in a fighting posture.
Gods in themselves
they seem. Young

Heraclitus here
darts fire from his eyes.
So quick is he, that he
the thunderbolt of Zeus
could stop with a glance,
and, fire on fire, destroy it.

Diodorus, too,
attains heroic status.
Rising from marble bench
he says, “Not only
warmth my body grants
to inanimate stone,
but if I will it,
the stone will melt,
run off like a flow
at the forge of Hephaestus.

The two regard me,
notice me noticing
their lovely forms.
I burn. I melt.