partly to pass the time
I took up a book to read last night,
a collection of Ptolemaic inscriptions.
The abundant praises and flatteries
all looked the same : all were bright
glorious potent benefactors,
every endeavor exceptionally wise.
Talk about women of the family: they too
were Berenices and Cleopatras, marvels, all.
Once I had managed to fix the era
I would have put the book away
but for one small insignificant mention,
which drew my attention instantly:
King Caesarion.
Ah, there you were
with a charm I cannot define.
In history there are about you
only a very few lines.
And so I imagined you more freely.
I made you handsome and sensitive.
My art endows your face
with appealing dream-like beauty.
And so fully did I make you up
that late last night when my lamp
went out—I let it go out on purpose—
I thought you came into my room.
You seemed to stand before me as you were
in conquered Alexandria
pale and weary, ideal in your grief
hoping still they will pity you
the false hearts who whispered,
“Too many Caesars.”
Body Remember
Body, remember, not just how much you were loved
not just the beds where you lay
but also those desires for you
that clearly shone in the eyes
that trembled in a voice–
and something accidental
got in the way and annulled them.
Now that they are all in the past
it is almost as though you did
give yourself to those desires.
How they shone, remember,
in the eyes that looked at you
how they trembled in the voice
for you, remember, body.
Lanes’ Grave
The Lanes whom you loved is not, Marko,
in the grave where you come
and weep and stay hour on hour:
the Lanes whom you loved
you have closer to you
at home when you close yourself in
and look at his picture
which has somehow maintained
what he had to be cherished
which has somehow maintained
what of him you loved.
Remember, Marko, when you brought
from the proconsular palace
the renowned Cyrenian painter.
He with what artistic cunning
as soon as he saw your friend
wanted to persuade you that
he absolutely had to
paint him as Hyacinthus
(This way his picture
would be spoken of the more).
But Lanes would not lend his beauty to that.
Firmly opposed he said he would represent
not Hyacinthus at all, nor anyone else
but Lanes, son of Rametichos, Alexandrian.
Recognition
The years of my youth, my sensual life,
how clearly I see their meaning now.
All the excessive, useless regrets. . . .
But I didn’t see the meaning then.
In the wanton life of my youth,
my poetry’s decrees took shape,
the content of my art took its form.
And so not even regrets were ever firm,
and my decisions to stop, to change,
lasted two weeks at most.
Nero’s Limit
Nero was not disturbed when he heard
at Delphi the oracle’s answer:
the “seventy-three years” he was to fear.”
He still had time to enjoy:
he is thirty. Enough and more
is the time god gives him
to see to the dangers ahead.
Now to Rome he will return a little weary,
but exquisitely weary from this trip
which was all days of enjoyment . . .
at the theaters, the gardens, the gymnasia . . .
evenings in Achaean cities . . .
Ah, above all, the pleasure of naked bodies.
So Nero. And Galba in Spain
the old man of seventy-three years.
Ambassadors from Alexandria
They had not seen for centuries such handsome gifts at Delphi
those that the two brothers sent, the rival Ptolemy kings.
But the priests, ever since they took the gifts, are uneasy
about their oracular response: their experience—
they will need all of it in arranging—senses sharpened—
which of the two—which of two like that—to displease.
At night they convene in secret session
deliberating the Lagid family fortunes.
But here are the ambassadors back again: they say Goodbye.
They say they return to Alexandria, they do not want
an oracular response. The priests are glad to hear it
(the shining gifts, it is understood, are theirs to keep),
but utterly at a loss—they have no sense at all
what this sudden indifference means.
They do not know that gloomy tidings
reached the ambassadors yesterday:
At Rome the oracular response was delivered:
there, the apportionment determined.
Aristoboulos
The palace weeps, the King weeps.
Inconsolable, King Herod mourns:
the whole state weeps for Aristoboulos:
so unfair, he drowned by accident
playing with his friends in the water.
And elsewhere too when they learn,
when up in Syria it is spread about,
many Greeks too will be sorry:
their poets and sculptors will grieve,
since Aristoboulos had a name with them
and what imagined young man of theirs
ever came to such beauty as that of this boy?
What image of god did Antioch claim
like this boy from Israel?
The First Princess weeps and grieves.
She is his mother, Alexandra, foremost of Jewish women.
She weeps and grieves for the disaster.
But when she is alone, her anguish changes:
She roars. She rages. She curses and swears.
How they mocked her! How they deceived her!
How at last they have won their goal,
destroyed the Asmonean house!
How the villain king brought it off,
crooked, vicious, scum!
How he brought it off! How underground a scheme!
Not even Miriam knew a thing!
Had she a notion, had Miriam suspected,
she would have found a way to save her brother—
as queen after all, she could have done something.
Now they will triumph and in secret rejoice,
those nasty pieces, Kypros and Salome!
Ordinary whores, Kypros and Salome!
And to be powerless, to be forced
to pretend to believe their lies,
not to be able to go to the people,
to go out and cry out to the Jews,
to say, to say that murder has been done!
In Port
Young—28 years old—Emis arrived
in this Syrian port with a ship out of Tenos,
and a view to learning the perfume trade.
But he fell sick on board and just barely
got off the boat and died. His burial, very poor,
was here. A few hours before he died he whispered
something about “home” and “old, old parents”
but who these were no one knew
nor what his country was
in the great panhellenic reach.
Better that way, because
while he lies dead in the port
his parents will always expect him alive.
Aimilianos Monai, Alexandrian, 628–655 AD
Out of words, looks, and behavior
I’ll make an excellent suit of armor
and that way I’ll face the malign.
I won’t be weak or afraid.
They will want to do me harm,
but no one coming near will know
where the hurts, the vulnerable places are
under the lies that cover me.
Aimilianos Monai’s boast.
Did he, I wonder, ever make that suit?
In any case he did not wear it long.
At age twenty-seven in Sicily, he died.
From Nine O’Clock
12:30. Time went fast
from 9:00 when I lit the lamp
and sat down here. I sat and did not read
and did not talk. Who would I talk to
all alone in this house?
from 9:00 when I lit the light
the image of my young body
came and found me and brought to my mind
closed and fragrant bedrooms
and pleasure gone by—what bold pleasure!
It also brought before my eyes
nightspots full of people that came to an end
and theatres and cafes that once were there.
The image of my young body
came and also brought me the more painful things:
family griefs, separations,
feelings of friends, feelings
valued so little of those who have died.
12:30. How the time has gone.
12:30. How the years have gone.
By the House
Yesterday I passed by the house
at the end of town
where I used to go
when I was very young.
Eros had gripped me there
with his amazing strength.
And yesterday
as I went up the old road
suddenly through love’s enchantment
everything was beautiful
shops sidewalks stones
windows balconies walls
nothing remained that was not beautiful.
And while I stood and looked at the door
stood stalling there by the house
all my being gave up
its stored voluptuous sensation.
Next Table
He’ll be barely twenty-two.
But I am sure that almost the same
number of years ago
I had the pleasure of this very body.
It is not erotic excitement at all.
I came into the casino only a little before.
I haven’t had time to drink very much.
I did have the pleasure of that body.
And if I do not remember when
my forgetting does not signify.
Ah now, see, he sat down
at the next table.
I know every move he makes
and under his clothes, naked,
I see again the beloved limbs.
Afternoon Sun
This room, how well I know it.
They’re renting it now, this and the one next door
as commercial offices. The whole house became
offices for middlemen and merchants and companies.
Ah, this room, how familiar it is.
Near the door here there was a sofa
and in front of it a Turkish rug
near the shelf with two yellow vases.
Right—no—across, a cupboard with mirror.
In the middle the table where he would write
and three big straw chairs.
Next to the window was the bed
where we made love so many times.
They still exist somewhere, poor things.
Next to the window, the bed:
the afternoon sun would come to its middle.
Afternoon at four o’clock we parted
For one week only. . . . Alas!
That week became forever.
To Stay
1:00 a.m. it would be
or 1:30,
in a corner of the bar
behind the wooden grill,
except for us two, the shop completely empty,
barely lit by a gas lamp:
asleep at the door, a worn-out waiter.
No one would see us. But we
were already so enflamed
we were not fit to be prudent.
Clothes half-opened—not many—
July, divine month, was burning.
Pleasure of flesh between
half-opened clothes—
quick baring of flesh.
This image has passed through twenty-six years
to come to stay in this poem.
Of the Jews
Painter and poet, runner, and discus-thrower,
fair as Endymion, Antonios’ son, Ianthes
comes from a family dear to the synagogue.
“The days I value most are those
when I leave the quest for beauty
abandon Greek culture,
which is beautiful and severe
in its sovereign obsession with perfectly formed
white corruptible limbs
and I myself become
what I would like to stay forever
a son of the Jews, the holy Jews.”
Very warm indeed his declaration:
“Forever to stay of the Jews, the holy Jews. . . . ”
But he did not stay that way at all.
Sensual Pleasure and the Art of Alexandria
held him their consecrated child.
Imenos
“. . . to be loved even more,
the sick sensual pleasure gotten with hurt
—rarely finding the body that senses its want—
that sick and with hurt to itself provides
a sexual tension that health does not know.”
Bit of a letter
from young Imenos (patrician) notorious
in Syracuse for his wantonness
in the wanton times of Michael the Third.
On Board
It’s like him, of course, this little
penciled likeness
quickly drawn on the deck of the boat
one magic afternoon
all around us, the Ionian Sea.
It’s like him. Yet I recall him as better looking,
sensitive to the point of suffering,
which gave a light to his face,
Better looking he seems to me
now that I call him back from Time,
From Time! All these things are too old:
sketch and boat and even afternoon.
Demetrios Soter
All he expected turned out wrong!
He dreamt he would do famous things:
He would end a humiliation that
since the time of the Battle of Magnesia
weighs heavy on his land, and he dreamt
that Syria again would be a powerful nation
with armies, fleets, great castles, and wealth.
He was suffering, he was pained at Rome
when he sensed in his friends’ conversations
(they, scions of the great houses )
with all the courteous delicacy they showed him,
King Seleucos Philopator’s son,
when he sensed there was always, however,
a covert lack of esteem for the Hellenizing dynasties
which had fallen now and were not fit for serious actions,
really unfit to rule nations.
He drew off indignant, and swore
it would not be at all as they thought.
Look! He has the will. He will confront.
He will act. He will set things straight. . . .
Just let him find a way to the East
to manage escape from Italy.
And all this strength in his soul, all this force
he will transmit to his people.
Ah, just to be in Syria!
He left his country so young
he dimly remembers her face.
But always he has her present in his mind
as a shrine you approach in reverence
a dream of a fair place, a vision
of Greek cities and harbors.
And now?
Despair now and sorrow.
They were right, the youth at Rome,
the dynasties cannot be sustained
those of the Macedonian Conquest.
No matter. He did his best.
He tried as hard as he could.
And in his black disenchantment
one thing only he reckons
with pride any more. Even in failure
he shows to the world
the same indomitable courage.
The rest—they were dreams and vanities.
This Syria, it is almost not like his country.
This is the land of Herakleides and Vala.
If He Did Die
“Where did he take himself off to?
Where was the Wise Man lost?
After his many miracles,
the fame of his teaching
spread to so many folks,
suddenly he hid himself, and no one knew
for sure what happened
(and no one ever saw his grave).
Some spread it about he died in Ephesos,
but Damis did not write that. Nothing
about the death of Apollonios did Damis write.
Others said he vanished at Lindos
or maybe that story is true:
he was taken to heaven from Crete
at the old sanctuary of Dictynna—
but still we have the miracle,
his supernatural appearance
to a young student at Tyana—
maybe the time has not come for him to return,
to be made visible to the world again,
or maybe changed in form he passes
among us unbeknownst—but he will again be seen
as he was, teaching the right; and then surely