by Brett Rutherford
Adapted from Meleager, The Greek Anthology,
xii, 133
Few understand Zeus
who for a millennium
keeps Ganymede
a happy captive,
his youth preserved.
Is it the way two hands
tip water to cup
from a silver amphora,
or the sweet savor
of never-aging lips?
Now I have kissed
Antiochus, fairest
of all the young men
hereabouts,
and so, I understand.
Ah, after clear water
from an ice-cold spring,
the soul’s sweet honey.
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.
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!
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?
by Brett Rutherford
Adapted from Meleager, The Greek Anthology, xii, 128by 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!”
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.
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?
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.
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!”
