On A Statue of Echo

 

by Brett Rutherford

Adapted from Archias, The Greek Anthology, xvi, 154

Just look at that marble face! She
could be anyone at all, hail
lady well met as they say, one
bland visage among a dozen
in a high school yearbook.

Greet her: she greets you back;
if you are curt, she is abrupt:
if you are garrulous,
she chatters on and on.

No name is carved on pedestal,
no clue to her proud parentage.
Boyish, yet no Amazon, she
has not the huntress pose, no spear
nor bow nor scabbard adorn her.

No scar of battle mars her limbs.
A temptress, then, nobody, and
nameless, no more than a nodding
acquaintance at best, who is she?

Echo she is, Pan’s companion,
the yearned-for one, the comforter
of lone shepherds, who loves them back
but from a distance, safe.

She makes false coin of your own voice,
and pays you with her empty words.
I’ll leave you here with her. I know
you’re smitten. Pour out your own soul
and smile at how the lady gets
the ups and downs of your troubles.

Cheap therapy, and never drunk,
she may be just what the doctor ordered.
Her eyes are blank. No matter what
you say, she never disapproves.

The sculptor makes copies, I’m told,
so you can even take one home.
But as for me, I made short work
of my relationship. I said,
“Get lost!” The statue said the same,
and I was done with the affair.

 

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.)