The Cenotaph

 by Brett Rutherford

     after Callimachus, Epigram 20

This mausoleum, unoccupied,
waits open-doored for Lycus,
gone on a merchant trip to Aegina.
He, of Naxos, and well-versed
in the seasons, went anyway
when Orion and Arcturus bode ill.
He drowned. Ship sunk,
Lycus inside the rotting hulk
of shattered vessel, now sells
his wares to the canny octopus.
Or worse, his bird-picked visage,
floats eyes-up in a knot of weeds.

Decorum forbids these thoughts
be put on stone, so just
his name above the lintel
must suffice. Wild wind
cascades the oak leaves in,
then out, of the empty tomb.

Step in. Remember him,
and if a soft murmuring
comes up, the breeze
and swaying myrtles amplify,
until a goat-cry issues
from your unwilling throat,

it is a warning to mariners,
of the two Kid-stars
in flickering Capella, whose fall
presages the storms that kill.

 

The Poor Man's Gravestone

 by Brett Rutherford

     adapted from Callimachus, Epigram 28

Having little, I humbly lived.
I asked for no monument, but
others who loved me, paid for one.
I had a point of pride, just one:
I never did a dreadful deed,
nor can anyone say
I injured them.

In proof of this I vowed:
O Earth, if I, Micylus,
have spoken well
of any evil thing,
deny me your light and blessing,
bar me and the kind guardians
who would lead me down
to the better shades below.

To refrain from evil
when it pays so well
is no small thing.

 

The Statue Speaks

 by Brett Rutherford

     from Callimachus, Epigram 26

Stranger, your passing glance
diminishes me. Hero am I;
my weapon is drawn; beneath
my foot the serpent peeks out.

 No less a man than Eetion,
born of Amphipolis, has set me here,
beside the doors of this, his home,
a small bronze in a small
vestibule.

                    No mount have I;
my sword is made, not for
the downward-looking cavalry,
but for the upward lunge.
I am no less a warrior for that.

 Although of Trojan descent,
Eetion is not a man
of equine disposition.
“A horse outside my door?”
he scoffs. “Greeks made us
such a one betimes,
and look where that got us!”

 

The Librarian's Lament

Callimachus was the head of the Great Library at Alexandria.
I expanded a tiny epigram to let him boast a little about his day job.

THE LIBRARIAN’S LAMENT

by Brett Rutherford

     adapted from Callimachus, Epigram 34

“But you haven’t any money.”
What kind of bedroom talk is that?
Listen Menippus, in the name of gods
and the Graces, don’t talk that way.
Would you tell me my own dreams
or blow my breath back into
my nostrils? It’s not as though
my purse had nothing in it
but nail clippings and navel lint.

I am the one in charge, the one
you ask questions of, when you
come begging for wisdom
at the library’s high desk.
And not just any library,
mind you, the Big One.

Here in the great city
of the Ptolemies,
every living author knows me,
solicits my help
in finding rare manuscripts.
I alone know
where everything is.

All Alexandria honors me
as author already
of some seven hundred
works. Does that seem poor
to you. By narrow bed
and simple furniture
you dare to judge me?

You do not tell the lame
they are crippled, or say
to the blind man, “Look here!”
It’s just that bitter to me
to have my lack of wealth
thrown back at me,
as though I had shamed
my ancestors. How crude,
and how unworthy.

Wake up in joy
in the bed you fell into,
with the one who will have you,
or do not wake at all!

   

Too Much Philosophy

by Brett Rutherford

     from Callimachus, Epigram 25

“Oh Sun, farewell!” the suicide
cried as he jumped off
the highest wall of the city.
So died Cleombrotus
and he went straight to Hades.

Nothing whatever
had gone wrong in his life.
His doting parents
were full of grief, and cursed
the evil star Catastrophe.

All this because he read
one book of Plato.

 

 

Swear Not Your Love

 by Brett Rutherford

     from Callimachus, Epigram 27

 The gods are too smart,
and much too occupied,
to listen to lovers’ promises.

A good thing, since Calignotus swore
to love her better than any woman.
He swore, and now she’s gone,
while he walks out and about
on the arm of a wealthy boyfriend.

 And as for poor Ionis, the girl,
gone like a gnat at dusk,
or pining in some temple’s cloister,
of her they shrug and say,
“Who knows?” This time next year
her name will be erased for good,
a smudge on love’s calendar.

 

The Goat Boy's Fame

by Brett Rutherford

     after Callimachus, Epigram 24

So who the hell is Asticides,
anyway? What's all the fuss?
A Cretan — need I say more?
A goat-herd, no less,
you know what they're into.

He vanished, it seems.
Not smart enough to chase one,
he let himself be carried off
by a desperate nymph.
You can just imagine
how desperate! So why
is his name brought up
each time some schoolboy
fails to come home at night,

"Ah, some girl has got him,
just like poor Asticides!"

This clown will be the death
of pastoral poetry. No more,
the pan pipes beneath the oaks
of Mt. Dikte, no more the odes
of Daphnis and the shepherds' life,

just hillbilly Asticides
crawling with fleas
a he-goat and a she-hag.
What is the city coming to?

A Father's Gravestone

 by Brett Rutherford

     after Callimachus, Epigram 23

Read closely, passer-by.
That there was Battus,
whose father was the warrior
Callimachus, and whose son
was Callimachus the poet,
this stone attests. That one
led an army, and the other
conquered with pen and scroll,
should not surprise you.

Battus stands between
as son and sire, and when
the Muses beamed their eyes
upon a child who smiled
and did not look away,

they were his guardians,
not just in easy youth
but later, when his head
was bowed and gray.

Walk on, then. Now you know.

Those Little Love-Notes

 by Brett Rutherford

     adapted from Callimachus, Epigram 43

By name, you accuse me,
and so, by name, Archinus,
I answer you:

if I left little poems
here and there for you to find,
I was decent about it.
Neither your name, nor that
of your family were impugned
by my obscure utterings.

If in my right mind
I serenaded you,
ten thousand blushes
befall both of us,

but as it was,
I came unwilling,
as wine and the love-god
forced me, one pulling me
from out my bed, the other
made me not ashamed
to stand there,
a gossip’s mockery.

Feebly, I sang;
trembling, I wrote.
If anyone listened,
they did not hear
for whom Callimachus
yearned. Once more
I scratched papyrus,
once more I waste
a lyric, it seems.

I kissed the doorpost.
I vanished just as
the moon rose up.
If this was wrong,
then so be it. I am
outed, and you,
you could do worse, you know.

 

Worse Every Day

 by Brett Rutherford

Witches and pedophiles
in pizza-shop basements,
Elders of Zion
with bearded Protocols,
rapists at the border
demanding to work
as strawberry pickers,
space lasers igniting
the unswept forests,
teachers conspiring
to teach actual history,
oceans not rising,
mass murders staged,
voting booths tampered
and thermometers, too,
pythons and lantern-flies,
COVID and monkey pox
all hoaxes to frighten you.

So things untrue
are truer than things
that are.
And now, just now,
polio is back,
and Palin, too?

Self-Epitaph (Callimachus)

by Brett Rutherford

from Callimachus, Epigram XXXVII

Of me it should suffice to say
“He was the son of Battus.”
You know the rest.
This is his tomb you pass.
But stay a while: he was
well-skilled in poetry,
and over the best of wine
did he not laugh with you?

Fear of Falling

 by Brett Rutherford

The man who would be king
avoids high parapets,
hill-tops and cliffs,
lest one swift wind,
or an assisting hand
should tip him over,

a parachute, twice-checked,
is always in reach
of his small hands
when his private jet zooms
from place to place.

He dreams in cold sweat
of a long fall from space,
not to some placid sea,
but to the very spot

where a sink-hole opens
to receive him.
So eager is Hell
to have him.

The Birth of Zeus

 by Brett Rutherford

     From Callimachus Hymn 1, 1-16

If this is to be a hymn sung to Zeus,
then keep to the subject: the god himself,
the king eternal, mighty forever,
he in whose name we crushed the Pelagones,
who to the quarreling Olympians
stands as their judge and arbiters?

 But just which Zeus do we raise glasses to?
He of Mt. Dikte on the island of Crete?
Or he of our own loved Arcady
where sturdy Mt. Lycaeum claims his birth?
What am I to do (not libations two!)
since the one and only Zeus attends us?
My spirit is torn. Some hold for Ida,
others swear it must be Arcadia.

 Well, Cretans are always liars. If one
says “this,” he ever means “that.” Yes, a tomb
by those prevaricators was built up,
and offerings collected, you can be sure,
but what a cheat this is. Zeus did not die,
nor was he ever mortal, seeding myth.

 The Oak-Tree Goddess, brown Rhea, bore him,
upon a hillside in a brushy shelter,
a place so dense that neither wolf nor boar
entered to disturb his infant slumber,
nor would the Arcadian women hear
his cries as they descended for water
to the banks of Eileithyia. Sacred
the place is still, Titan Rhea’s child-bed.

 Alone in dark of moon, Rhea strode down
to cleanse herself of ichor’d afterbirth,
and to bathe the newborn child of thunder.

 …