Priapus on the Seashore

by Brett Rutherford

After Archias, The Greek Anthology, x, 7, 8, 10.

Here I am, all penis,
a tiny head one snail
has died upon and helmeted,
no legs to speak of. What made
some sailor carve and leave me
erect forever in full view
of every passing fisherboat?

Pan of this holy cliff,
Pan of the shore, I guard
and bless the frail ships
and sing to sleep the Kraken,
soften the wild winds, avert
the thunderbolts so mast
and sail return unriven
by the wrath of Poseidon.

Whoever leaves
his fishing-basket here
beneath my pointy prow
is assured of finding it
when he returns. All nets
thrown out beneath my gaze
lure in the fish in plenty
so long as a nod and a song
acknowledge my power.

I may not be Olympian
but every god rampant
in quest of love or pleasure
carries my likeness
alert and ready
beneath his jeweled belt.

Stranger, I see your ship
becalmed, or straying off
in false directions. Call back
my name, and a hearty hail,
and I’ll arrange a wind,
that gentle, southwest push
that tilts your sail towards
those blue-black waters
where the unbidden fish
leap into piles on deck.

Sometimes a grateful sailor,
whose storm was stilled
by the invoking of “Priapus!
Lord, protect me!” comes,
to leave a garland, or burn
the fat of some horned animal.

I’ve never had a hecatomb,
but I am honored enough
at sea, and in the town
when every lover, hesitant
at the door of the beloved
takes a deep breath
and invokes my name.

 

At Homer's Grave on Ios

 

by Brett Rutherford

     Adapted from Antipater, The Greek Anthology, vii, 2

What, no marble tomb? No arching eagle,
no piled up swords and spears, no line
of weeping maidens or expiring youths?
No harbor, no city, no temples high
on clifftop to catch the gold of sunrise?
See, stranger, this craggy rock of Ios,
covers the scant bones of Maconides’ son,
he of the mighty voice, one envied by
the Muses themselves. A dozen islands
claim him, but only here he breathed his last.

His sightless eyes perceived the nod of Zeus;
the doings of kings and men, love’s madness,
and of Olympus, too, where gods contended
and human blood stood in for ichor blue.
His ears heard all, from dove-flight to war-cry
as Ajax held back the Trojan advance
and made men shake and vomit with terror.
His stylus did not hesitate to tell
how the flesh of Hector was stripped away
as Achilles dragged him thrice around Troy,
a freight of gore behind Thessalian steeds.

Visitor, this grave is no counterfeit.
This sorry height, desolate, is honest.
This is a small stone, you charge. I answer:
one slab just high and wide enough to hold
these words, suffices. Men come from nowhere,
and nowhere but here is where his bones rest.

(Peleus, the hardy spouse of Thetis,
warrants no more than just such piled-up stones
on Ikos, an insignificant isle
if ever I saw one. Go there yourself,
and see if the old dead be not astir
when you recite the lines of Homer and
the sky leans cloud-ears to the sea to hear.)

His Attributes

by Brett Rutherford

The lethargy of the crocodile,
the wit
     of a crouching tarantula,
the gait of one
who ambles about on pseuodpods,
the judgment of a slug,
the manners
    of an offended Portuguese
          Man of War,

the courting style
     of a barging ram,
the cleanliness
     of a caged ape

the fragrance
     of the unburied dead,
the honor
     of the twice-impeached,

the tiny hands
     no longer finding
          the shrunken

member. A fondness
     for boxes and all
          the things within them,

an eye that gleams
     blackmail, another
          outlining the shape
of a breast, or up the line
     from ankle to skirt,

a pouty lip, words
     on the tongue-tip, spewn
out, spent bullets
     of scandal and calumny.

Come, rally round.
Buses for followers.
For the rest,
     boxcars.

Prayer to A Strange Goddess

 

by Brett Rutherford
 

     Adapted from Anonymous, The Greek Anthology, vi, 24
 

Astarte, strange Syrian
goddess of who-knows-what,
poor Heliodorus turns
to you -- his last resort --
and places on your temple porch
the net he wore out only
by casting and drawing in
these untold days, the net
that not a single fish
was captured in! Seaweed
was all he hauled and spread,
to the amusement of fellow
fishermen, upon the beach
where his sad bark anchored.
 

Astarte, prove yourself:
if Greece's gods do nothing,
then, star of Phoenicia,
take up this net and ply
with your own gold fingers
its knots and weaves, until
it learns to summon fish
as the asphodel draws bees.
Lady of Lions, hear this prayer!

In the Balkans

by Brett Rutherford

     After Archias, The Greek Anthology, ix, 111

In Thrace they mourn
when a baby’s head
peeps out from the womb
into the painful light
of day. In Thrace, the dead,
upon their burial,
are deemed most blessed of all.
(Death only serves the Fates,
a welcome dinner guest.)

Maybe they have it right:
in Life, all sorts of woe
and evil happenings
befall the innocent
and the evil-doer
with equal measure. One
medicine mends all, and
levels all in common: Death.

Having no borders
     and no common gods
they murder one another
     merrily, and without cause.
Insults take generations
     to avenge, and blood
     stains more than wine
     the kitchen floor.

So grim and quarrelsome a place,
such dour inhabitants:
small wonder no one visits Thrace!

Singing Ludwig

by Brett Rutherford

Three friends and I
crossed a long field,
skirting the wetlands behind
our dismal college.

On a dare, we each in turn
sang out the opening bars,
and major themes
of every movement
of all nine symphonies.
Beethoven, deaf,
cared not what key
we sang it in, but would
have smiled when we reached,
at last, the Ninth’s Finale.

We did it, we who sipped wine
on Ludwig’s December birthday.

Not one of us
     was a music major.
We knew these symphonies
the way we knew to breathe.

These nine stupendous works
cap off a vast and free
inheritance that belongs to all.

Today, I mention the Master
and those works’ long shadows
over everything that followed,
and most of those around me
squirmed and changed the subject.

Poor fools, do you think
there’s time enough in Heaven
to attend to serious music?

Who leaves a check
for a million dollars,
a life of ecstasies and joy,
unclaimed, uncashed?

 

Killing the Lion at Nemea

Hercules and the Nemean Lion, Francesco de Zuburan (1634)

by Brett Rutherford

     After Archias, The Greek Anthology, xvi, 94

It was not much of a place,
     where wasted ploughmen tilled
          an always-reluctant earth.

He was not much of a lion,
     either. He had no wife, no pride.
          Last of his kind, he was starving.

Some days he barely raised himself
     on spindly legs, to seize a lamb
          fresh born from a protesting ewe;

some days he menaced the farmers’
     sons, but not in memory
          had he tasted the sweet man-flesh

that is the Lion’s high delight;
     and as for bulls (he counted four),
          they tossed him up and over them

and snorted in contempt. Now who
     should come to annoy his rest
          but that club-wielder, Heracles!

Cudgel discarded, the hero stalked
     in circles around the somnolent
          lion, kneading his iron-strong fingers

palm to palm. “With my own hands, dread
     killer of the Nemean plain,
          I plan to strangle you. Rise up

"and offer fang and claw, that I
     may interrupt your best attempt
          at fatal leap with one fore-arm,

“for I am Heracles, killer
     of monsters. Up, I command you!”
          The lion only flicked his long tail.

“That is my brother’s coat you wear,”
     the Lion responded. “Does the skin
          of a lion make you a lion?”

The foe with shoulder broad as ox
     tossed off the pelt to face him nude.
          “Lion! I am a son of Zeus!

“No more the lamb need fear the day,
     no more shall Echo hear thy roar
          and mimic it to chill the blood.” —

“Oh, no more speeches, Heracles!
     All know that Hera despises
          her husband’s half-human offspring.” —

“Fight me, thou sluggard cat!” shouted
     the outraged demigod. Instead,
          the Lion sighed — rolled over — died.

The Shipwreck's Grave

by Brett Rutherford

     Adapted from Archias, The Greek Anthology, vii, 278

Why here, within the sea’s
ear-shot, have you buried me
in this godforsaken place
where the tide crashes
on the rocks below, and winds
echo the wrath of Poseidon
endlessly? Low surges
that never sleep, the groan
of tides coming in
and going out,
the hiss of salt spray:
it's all enough to drive one mad
for even though I am dead
in distant Hades, I hear it all.


If foot-treads come
and someone offers flowers
I would never know it,
for the ocean’s roar
drowns everything.

Don’t waste a prayer here:
Words are blown back
into your throat,
your utterance a moving mouth
without a thought behind it
for all I know.

My name was Theris,
and all you know of me, it seems,
is that the waves delivered me,
an eyeless corpse, fish-ridden,
after my father sent me
with dowry and serving maids
for an arranged marriage.

Now on this brine-salt hill
whose soil sprouts no flowers,
right next to the sea that killed me,
some stranger saw fit
to dig this grave,
and with a paper’s shroud
deposit my remains
into this noisy cacophony.

Oh, be assured, I joined
the lonely dead in Hades,
but here I walk about,
alone, unspoken-to,
two howling sea-shells glued
to my agonized ears.

Until the ocean dries
and the sea becomes
an object of literature and legend,
I shall have no repose.