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.
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.
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.
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| A reading of Molière, Jean François de Troy, about 1728 |
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.
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.
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.
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.
by Brett Rutherford
