Three Spinning Sisters

by Brett Rutherford

     After Archias, The Greek Anthology, vi, 39

From the dark we come;
to the dark we go.
We were three of Samos
Euphro, Satyra, and Heracleia,
daughters of Xuthus and Melite.

To gray-eyed Athena
we have bequested these
unworthy offerings,
the implements with which
we staved off poverty:

The spindle, weary
of its long service making
fine, spidery thread,
and its long distaff;
the musical comb
that pulled the close-weave cloth
together, and this worn-out
basket from which the wool,
wadded and piled up high,
passed from one sister’s hand
to another’s.

Our eyes have failed,
our fingers stiffen,
and so we gather up
this last offering,

with which a poet,
taking pity, added
these suppliant lines.
Some of our work
is already in Hades:
shrouds we have made
for rich and poor.

From the dark we come,
to the dark we go.
Down there,
if asked,
we will mend and sew.

The Dented Trumpet

 by Brett Rutherford

     Adapted from Archias, The Greek Anthology, vi, 195

Athena, scorn not
this dented trumpet placed
before your temple. This
is no token or plaything.

Miccus of Pallene offers it.
You heard its brazen tune once
as soldiers, passing,
raised shields and shouted
in your honor. And then
the enemy turned pale
as Ares the god’s anthem
roared out and their blood
ran cold with the fear of death.

At your feet, goddess,
here, an instrument of civil pride
and there, of doom to foes.

An Offering to Priapus

by Brett Rutherford

     Adapted from Archias, The Greek Anthology, vi, 192

Worn out, the old fisherman
drapes on the Priapus
figurine all the tools of his trade:

remnants of his seine
through which the fishes
large and small, swam free;

the baskets in which
he carried his catch to market;
the conversation-hook
on a horse-hair line
that had never failed him;
the well-made trap
that lured the beauties in;
the trusty float, ever
and always upright atop
the water, marking for all
his hidden casts below.

Round rocks the tide reveals
no longer bear his tread,
nor does the kissing tide lull
his slumber on the soft sands
where this one or that one
siren-sighed, “Phyntilus,
     Oh, Phyntilus!”

Now, from a hilltop
he just watches.
The flat and finless

sea is done with him. 

Introduction to the Poems of Meleager

We know the Greek poet Meleagros by his Latinized name Meleager, and under this name classical scholars recognize not only a fine lyric poet, but also the compiler of the first major anthology of Greek lyric poems, epigrams and fragments. Because he was proud or vain enough to pack the anthology with his own works, we have enough to get a sense of his life and passions. And passions he had in abundance. 

We do not know when Meleager was born, or when he died, only that he wrote his works in the first century BCE. The landmark anthology he edited, the Stephanos (or “garland”), was completed no later than 60 BCE. The poet was born far from the Hellenic world’s literary center, in Gadara (now Umm Qais in present-day Jordan). He spent his school years and middle life in Tyre (in present-day Lebanon), emigrating not quite to the Greek motherland, but to the Aegean island of Kos, where he spent his last years as a grateful resident. 

Reading the poems scattered at random through The Greek Anthology, whose initial kernel of poems Meleager himself compiled, one perceives this fine poet only in fragments, a broken mirror. Assembled together, however, the works form a self-portrait of a man swept from one fervent attachment to another. For Greeks of his era, the worship of beauty, and attaining possession of the beloved, were daily pursuits for all who had the leisure and taste to do so. 

Two women claim Meleager’s deepest love. Heliodora, literate, accomplished, was probably a  hetaira, one of that class of independent, unmarried women who mingled freely with men. She is Meleager’s great love, but she is scandalously unfaithful, so he takes comfort in the arms of a second woman, Zenophila. This lesser mistress, equally unfaithful, seems not too bright despite her wonderful singing voice. Meleager’s insecurity, jealousy, and sarcasm make his love poems true to life in any era. Any of us who have gone through adolescent obsessive crushes will recognize the emotions and language. When, some years later, Meleager learns of Heliodora’s death, his lament for her is a touching elegy and a cry of grief.

The most common theme in the love poems is Meleager’s claim that men and women have no control over whom they love, and that physical desire is almost indistinguishable from love to those under its sway. The pop psychology of the day, an inverted introspection, personifies desire as an external force. Aphrodite and Eros are literal characters in everyday life, and go about compelling people to pursue one another in a state of near-possession. Eros/Cupid, sometimes a mischievous child, and at other times an alluring young man, is a two-faced demigod. While Eros with his bow and arrow can make men and women desire one another, he is just as inclined to make Greek men fall in love with idling young men, all too willing to play the game. Sex is a sport for gods and men, utterly divorced from the workaday world of marriage, property, and the begetting of children.

Indeed, for Meleager, after the disasters with Heliodora and Zenophila, he seems to have spent the rest of his days writing about, if not sleeping with, dozens of beautiful young men. I caution readers not to mistake these affections, whether they were consummated or not, and in what manner, for pedophilia. My distinct impression is that the ephebes, upper-class young men between seventeen and twenty years of age, with their characteristic costume and cap, the chlamys and petasos — the ancient equivalent of T-shirts, jeans, and baseball caps — were regarded as adults, engaged in studies, athletics, and military exercises. These were the customs throughout the Hellenic world. Sexual preference overall was a subject of humor, but was ultimately a matter of taste.

 Other poems of Meleager shed light on Greek myth, and the Greek world-view, in which short and sometimes brutal life ends for all in the cold darkness of Hades. The beautiful died young, or drowned at sea. Ghosts complained of the dark afterlife. Meleager narrates these gloomy outcomes, and expects no special reward below for having been a servant of the Muse. He earns our admiration for his honesty about himself, and for his essential goodness. He may be a lunatic for love, but he is an ethical lunatic, never cruel. Lied to, he does not lie. Deceived, he sheds light on all. 

Among the more literary poems here are his introductory prologue to the original Greek Anthology and its poets; the messenger’s speech bringing bad news for Queen Niobe of Thebes; and a beautiful tribute to Spring, a work that anticipates Virgil. I have included a sufficient number of these other poems to demonstrate that Meleager was more than a “confessional” poet. 

From Meleager’s 134 extant epigrams and short poems, I have chosen 70 for this poem cycle, in which I adapt, combine, and expand upon the originals. These adaptations and (sometimes) expansions are not a word-for-word translation. I claim the privilege of meeting Meleager poet-to-poet, his words and thoughts rendered in my manner, his rowdy Hellenic world akin to my New York City of the 1970s. One poem here, “Go To Elysium” is an invention “in the manner” of Meleager. If I have succeeded here, a reading of this collection will bring this timeless Greek back to life. He reminds you of yourself, or of some friend you know who is always in love, tossed this way and that by Eros. Like all great poets, Meleager is of his time, and for all time.

For the new book, By Night and Lamp: The World of Meleager.

List of My Books At The Poet's Press

 

Books by Brett Rutherford

• It Has Found You: New Poems and Writings 2020-2021
• Pity the Dragon: Poems on Chinese Themes
• Callimachus at Alexandria: A Poem Cycle
• The Story of Niobe
• The Island of the Dead.
• The Inhuman Wave
• Fatal Birds of the Soul
• The Pumpkined Heart
• The Doll Without A Face
• Crackers At Midnight
• Anniversarius - The Book of Autumn
• The Gods As They Are, On Their Planets, 2nd ed.
• Prometheus on Fifth Avenue, 2nd edition.
• Things Seen in Graveyards
• Prometheus Chained
• Dr Jones & Other Terrors
• Trilobite Love Song
• An Expectation of Presences
• Whippoorwill Road - The Supernatural Poems
• Poems from Providence
• Twilight of the Dictators
• Night Gaunts - An Entertainment Based on the Life and Work of H. P. Lovecraf

Ancien Regime

A reading of Molière, Jean François de Troy, about 1728

by Brett Rutherford

She had at least five names.
We never knew them all.
Look at the paintings:
three days at least to sell
at auction such masterworks.
Like bees, the antiquarian
booksellers descend
upon her famed library.
A shame: the furniture alone
is a museum of its time.

It was as though
she descended from Olympus
with the wealth of Midas.
She loaned pocket money to princes.
Most cheated her, but one,
ascending the throne, gave her

a ducal palace. Her salons
were legendary, wine cellars
incomparable. Composers knelt
by her soft couch, and played
her famed three-manual
harpsichord. She laughed
at religion and all its follies.
She was high up
on the Grand Inquisitor's list
of those to exterminate.

Within four walls
of marble and onyx,
she calmed philosophers
and statesmen, sped verse
along its way, and spent
to the last ducat the wealth
that had come to her.
Praise rolled off her;
gossip's goblins
gave her no pain.
She never married,
was no one's mistress.

Who could have guessed?

Her tomb says just
"Rebecca,
Rachel and Solomon's
daughter."

The White Lady

by Brett Rutherford

Part Four of "A Northumbrian Wedding"

And now I turn, and facing me,
the polar opposite of the old invader
and his dragon visage, there stands
tall as an oak, The White Lady.

I see, again, the black-hued rats,
how dark they clot the landscape,
blotting with sable hues the fields of wheat,
spoiling the grape, and the apple harvest.

She sings with flute-like tone, “Away! Away!”
The rats stop. She waves her hand
toward the River Tyne below, to where
the rich groom’s yacht
     has shouldered out the fisher-boats.

“Away! Away!” she cries,
and the rats surge up below us,
flooding the gangplank to vanish
into the yacht’s interior. As fast
as they had come, the dark wave
of pestilence thins out, is gone.
Packed they must be in every inch
of space below the decks, all but
invisible steerage passengers,
bound like their predecessor rodents
to teeming Manhattan. “Away! Away!”
she sings again, and all
are gone and still.

                                I swoon at this,
and without knowing how, I find myself
again in the company of one
whose feet are lily-pads, who then
returned me to the wedding hall.

The bride is lovely. None seem
to notice that her pristine gown
is made entirely of small, white mice.
The groom’s cloak seems full
of raven wings and clinging martlets.
Beaks, snouts, and claws reach out
at wedding cake and goblets.
All is as planned, and as my
crisply engraved invite presaged.
Guests come in the guise of animals.
As merry it is as a Furry convention.
Though no one is drunk, the dancing
grows more and more wild as sun
sinks and a silver moon rises.

Who said that Northumberland is stern,
has never been to a Robson-Rutherford Wedding!

 

 

March 3, 2023, from a preceding night’s dream.

Lord Rutherford's Castle

 

by Brett Rutherford

Part Three of "A Northumbrian Wedding"

As crowds flow past and into the banquet hall,
I find myself alone. The barred door
of the castle keep, bronze studded with iron,
forbids my passage. I knock
my umbrella against its dark shielding.
A hollow booming echoes back — I dread
that Lord Rutherford, my cousin drear,
as much averse to weddings as to funerals,
will come running in his bathrobe,
or that some chain-mailed retainer
will pull the vast door ajar and menace
me with the very sword we brought
into this land from Flanders. But no,
my knock presumptuous just fades away.

I spy a lesser door, and stones
whose curious hand-holds pose
a challenge like some Chinese puzzle box.
Somehow my hands know where
to put themselves. With ease,
one cornerstone pulls out; the door
on a spring’d hinge just opens itself,
and in and up I go. My feet
know when to tread, and where
exactly one must side-step so as
to miss a plummeting to brain-dash.
As quick as a rabbit racing, I find
myself at the castle’s high precipice,
standing on checkerboard flagstones.

A rude stone sculpture, crumbling
and eaten away by ivy, rears up,
half-man, half-dragon, but faces in,
as though to guard from eyes the view —

And what I see! Oh, words
for once have almost failed me.
A horizon high, impossibly so,
two rivers meeting, and on
its level island, white and gold,
three towers by time unchanged:

a cathedral as new as on the day
it was completed, rainbow-hued
as its multi-colored windows
gleam brighter than the sun
without; a great, good hall
to shelter the merchant arts and serve
workman, lords, scholars and clerks;
and higher than both, a castle
beyond the dream of fairy-tales
with trees and hanging gardens blessed,
a place of neither strife nor war.

Rats at the Wedding

 by Brett Rutherford

Part Two of "A Northumbrian Wedding"

I have come
for the Robson-Rutherford wedding.
The inn’s last room is mine,
secured by my distant-cousin status.
My room overlooks the Tyne.
The castle beyond is all a-stir,
the grand hall packed with visitors.

Yet the old keep and its twisted turret
is barred and closed.
     Lord Rutherford forbids
the tread of curious idlers
upon its steep unbannistered steps,
windows unpaned; uneven-floored
the crenellated tower-top is, where
one might plummet to the very dungeon.

I pass a train depot and shelter
whose sign points out
the way to London, Edinburgh,
Paris, and Rome, though no one
seems to come or go
by either train or autobus. Indeed,
a colony of wharf-rats, obscenely fat
have taken residence on every bench
and nest in piles of yellow ticket stubs.

“Don’t mind them,” Lady Robson advises.
“As she is marrying an American,
the silly creature, we’ve drawn the rats.
Off to New York they go, and not
a moment too soon for Northumberland.”
This is an elder lady’s fantasy, I guess.

How such a Pied-Piper feat could be
accomplished was beyond my figuring.

Assuredly the rats are here for cake,
like all the distant relatives come on
with smiling insincerity and gifts
(white elephants that rotate fete to fete).

Rats, rice, and diamonds, the stuff
of weddings since ancient times.

A Gift of Daffodils

 by Brett Rutherford

Part One of "A Northumbrian Wedding"

1.

A Gift of Daffodils

“I was given the gift of daffodils.” —
“How sad,” I say. “So brief a bloom
despite the glory they bring for a day.” —
“Come see,” the old one, smiling, says.

She puts her apron aside and rises,
strutting the cobblestones on spindly legs.
Her feet, I see, end not in shoes
but wide-spread lily pads. Duck feet
could not be more sure of tread
as she led me to the shaded wall
beneath St. Cuthbert’s church. There,
tiny narcissus-daffodils peeped up.
“That’s fine,” said I, “but in a week
the petals fade and fall. Yon rose
blooms over and over again. Mistress,
I shall gift you a bed of roses.” —

“Nay, sir, with daffodils I stay,
for what I plant here, blazons
above.” Just then, as I looked up,
the organ pealed in all its octaves
and light filled from within
the ancient, stained-glass window,
not a saints suffering, or Christ a-cross,
but an endless vista of gold
and white athwart green spears,
twenty feet high and every inch
a portrait of exploding daffodils.

Woe to Bayonne, New Jersey

by Brett Rutherford

In my dreams last night,

I attempted to get

to Bayonne, New Jersey.

I do not drive. The road

to Bayonne has no sidewalks.

By train, by bus,

I had to get to Bayonne, New Jersey,

I have never been

to Bayonne, New Jersey.

Woe unto those who dwell

in Bayonne, New Jersey!

Bayonnis and Bayonettes,

your days are numbered!

Whom should I seek

in Bayonne, New Jersey?

Am I to rescue them

or am I the doom

they have dreaded

since the first Bayonne

sunrise greeted them?

Alas for Bayonne, New Jersey!

Do sandwich-sign men

tread the main streets

and announce my coming?

Are there churches

in Bayonne, New Jersey?

Do their bells peal

to warn the citizens

of my arrival? Hands

over eyes, hands over

the ears of the children,

hands reaching for guns,

is their defense adequate

against the moment

I cross the town line

and breathe deep

the chemical fragrance

of Bayonne, New Jersey?

Will ghost flames flare

at the old refinery?

Will the low howl

of tanker horns shake

the port of Bayonne?

The words I utter

will be their undoing.

I am worse

than an unwelcome

immigrant, more

dangerous than a scout

from an off-shore pirate

schooner. I, alone,

asking for nothing,

threaten all.

I have written a book.

Woe to Bayonne,

New Jersey!

Like

Comment

Share

Cover art for Pity the Dragon

 Pity the Dragon: Poems on Chinese Themes has gone to press. Here is the cover.

KangXi Drinks Tea From His Porcelain Eggshell Teacups

KangXi Emperor, Age 45.

by Brett Rutherford

Adapted and expanded from the paintings and poems on twelve Qing Dynasty teacups.

FIRST MONTH

Snow comes, but so too,
the early blossoms,

plum, while down below
the delicate narcissus

buds up among the
bamboo, indestructible.
My sheltered courtyard
encourages such early
arrivals, out of season.

Nature, I ask,
or sly gardening?

Even when all is still,
fragrance moves on its own
from branch to ground,
along the cold rocks,
and then inside
to the teacup’s rim.

 

SECOND MONTH

Evening rain pelts
the abundant flowers
on the apricot trees.

Their stamens radiate
attentive tendrils alert
to every falling drop.

Sunshine or mist
paint watercolor

upon the pale hue
of the white petals.

Am I smelling them,
or does the rain wear
a subtle perfume,
enchanting, seducing
me to put down the teacup,
disrobe, and walk
in the gentle downpour?

 

THIRD MONTH

Peach blossoms should really
employ a whole orchestra
to boom out good news
with their coming.

In Heaven, the peaches bloom
and bear fruit at the same time,

the food the monkeys covet
which makes the gods immortal.

Peach blossoms should fall
with gongs and drums,
alerting the farmers
to renew their labors,
and calling back
the welcome song-birds.

To drink tea beneath
a grove of tall and blossoming
peaches, requires company.
An emperor-to-be
invites two heroes
to drink and swear oaths
of eternal brotherhood.

The peach is the witness
to their youth and honor.

 

FOURTH MONTH

One must be up at dawn
to see the sly peony
untighten its grasp
on night, and drink
the dew of the immortals.

Once it has opened in full,
one almost faints
at how it makes a sphere
of petals a rose would die
to emulate, how ants
come climbing up the stems
to do it worship.

Only the finest
and most intricate
scholar’s stone
is worthy to stand
beside the peony,
a sculpture carved
by wind and water,
carried from afar
to be one peony tree’s
shade, shelter, and
companion.

An emperor seeks
one such, among
his counselors.
The maddening scent
mocks those who work
in the Jade Hall, where
wisdom is sought.
In vain.

 

FIFTH MONTH

Heavy as rocks,
the pomegranates hang
from their sturdy tree.
Yellow spheres aburst
with wet red seeds,
will ripen and blush
at their own abundance.

Their silhouettes,
as I drink tea,
wave back and forth
on the white-washed wall
behind me. The seeds
as plentiful as bees
in a hive, cannot
be counted. Taste
pomegranate, and tea
is, for a moment,
forgotten. It is
the garden’s concubine.

 

SIXTH MONTH

Look down below!
Who notices, in mud,
the lowly lotus root
like unearthed jade?
Yet when it bursts to bloom
the whole world worships it.

Two mandarin ducks
swim in the pond.
Their adoration
of the lotus flower
is in the way small waves
make furrows out
beneath their feet,
the small bows
of bill to water.

Only the crane,
from its cloud-perch
can see the symmetry
of lotus, water, shore,
the two brown ducks,
and one aged and lanky
Emperor, cup in hand.

 

SEVENTH MONTH

I sit. I have my tea.

All wish me well,
or so they say.
A seventh cup
they place before me.
Pale tea moves
second-hand as water
boils, goes through
the yi xing teapot

(mine alone),

and into the eggshell
porcelain. No hand
but mine has touched it.
All wish me well,
but there is always poison
to worry about.
Mistrust of doctors, too,
if any of them
have better friends,
and younger,
than my Imperial self.

This cup is adorned
with the most reliable
flower: the rose.
Although its heady
oil, perfume’s bounty,
makes me sneeze,

I respect its tenacity.
Outliving winters,
indifferent gardeners,
and even dark
conspiracies,
one shade against
another fratricide,

it just keeps going on.

Just as this emperor
goes on from year to year
outliving all prophecies

the tough rose
blooms anytime
it pleases.

 

EIGHTH MONTH

Just as the hare
has many progeny,
the guihua tree,

osmanthus, from
the far-off Himalayas,
flowers and branches
endlessly, spring,
winter, and fall.

An evergreen,
and fragrant too,
it flavors a tea
and an autumn wine
the Emperor is known
to savor in private.

Two things at least,
the world shall never
run out of: rabbits
and guihua trees.

 

NINTH MONTH

O Chrysanthemum,
the only way
to enjoy you,
is with a wine-cup
in hand. Oh, very well,

the Emperor may hold
his favored tea-cup full
of tea made from dried
chrysanthemum petals,

while everyone else
goes mad with its liquor.
Nature joins in.
Insane butterflies
flutter about, bees faint
with overdose of pollen.

Two hands, two eyes
are not enough
to paint the things
chrysanthemums
make happen.

A thousand year’s memories
crowd into one day
of sun-burst petals.

 

TENTH MONTH

Indoors,
among the orchids,
the Emperor takes tea,
on the day of many
bloomings. Stubborn,
the pampered ladies
withhold their colors,
refuse to unfurl
their sumptuous hoods.

Unlike the concubines
who come when summoned,
the orchids, keep close
and treasured just as much
as ladies of high families,

cling to rock and branch,
shy and particular.

And then, one day,
the eunuchs come running:

They are ready, Majesty,
the orchids are blooming!

 

ELEVENTH MONTH

Unable to sleep,
the Emperor walks,
unseen,
and unaccompanied
by guard or eunuch,
in a sheltered garden.

Is that Narcissus
he sees in moonlight,
breaking the soil
like waves against a dike?
Will they bloom so soon?

Dare they?  Is this
the Daoist gardener’s
laboratory, where plants
are made to bloom at will,
a fox-fairy’s paradise?

At sudden turn, he sees
the old gardener, lamp
in hand, who, horrified
to face his master,
trembles and begins
the humbling know-tow.

“Stand, you old magician,”
the Emperor intones.
“You have not seen me.
I was not here. Those were not
flowers seen too soon.

I have had entirely
too much tea.”

TWELFTH MONTH

Out and about
when he should not have been,
the Emperor paced
in a poorly-heated room,
hands cupping
the small tea-cup
as much for warmth
as for the taking
of such a small dose
of reality.

His feet trampled frost.
His eyes took in
the beauteous pattern
of ice on flagstones,
the tendril’d snow
at grass’s edge.

The sun had risen.
The abundant blossoms
of wintersweet lit up
with the morning’s own
gold. Not a leaf
in sight, but all those
petals sprung
from out bare branches.

How rare among
the flowering trees
was this, which bloomed
defiantly
while others shivered,
barren, for warmer days.

 

EPILOGUE

Twelve cups,
in a rosewood cabinet,
each for a lunar month.
On delicate eggshell
porcelain, so thin
that light shines through,
an artist painted such scenes,
and a poet described them
calligraphy beneath the glaze.

The cup was for
one drinker only. He,
the Son of Heaven,
ate all his meals alone,
drank tea alone —
not from the coarse cups
seen at the state banquets —
from these small, footed,
porcelain bowls.

With the rising of each moon,
one cup was taken
discreetly away
and replaced with the next.