Complete Poems (17 page)

He sees the fields of which he’s still the master,

with their corn, their livestock, with their fruitful

trees. And further off the house of his forefathers,

filled with clothes and costly furnishings, and silver.

They’ll take it all—Christ Jesus!—now they’ll take it all.

He wonders whether Cantacuzenus will have pity

if he goes and falls at his feet. They say he’s lenient,

extremely lenient. But those around him? The army?—

or should he prostrate himself and plead with Lady Irene?

Dullard! To have gotten tangled up with Anna’s faction—

curse the day that Lord Andronicus ever

married her. Have we seen any success

come from her conduct, any humankindness?

Even the Westerners no longer value her:

Her plans are ridiculous, her strategy absurd.

While from the City they were threatening the world,

Cantacuzenus laid them low, Lord John laid them low.

And to think he’d planned to go over to Lord John’s

side! And he’d have done it, too. And he’d be happy now,

still a great noble, solidly established,

if the bishop hadn’t persuaded him at the last minute,

with his hieratic pushiness,

with his faulty information from start to finish,

and with his promises, and his foolishness.

Verses by young Temethus,
      suffering in love.

Entitled “Emonides”—
      Antiochus Epiphanes’

dearly loved companion;
      a surpassingly comely

youth of Samosata.
      But if the verses were

heated, deeply moving
      it’s because Emonides

(who belongs to that
      ancient period:

year one-thirty-seven
      of the Greeks’ dominion!—

perhaps a little earlier)
      was added to the poem

simply as a name;
      quite fitting, all the same.

A love of Temethus
      is what the poem expresses,

fine and worthy of him.
      We who are initiates,

his most intimate friends;
      we who are initiates

we know who it is
      for whom the lines were written.

The clueless Antiochenes
      read only “Emonides.”

One detail in particular greatly moves me

about the crowning, in Blachernae, of John Cantacuzenus

and Irene, Andronicus Asen’s daughter.

As they had very little in the way of precious stones

(our wretched dominion’s poverty was great)

they wore artificial ones. A heap of bits of glass,

scarlet, green, or blue. There was nothing

that was abject or unsuitable

in my eyes about those little pieces

of colored glass. On the contrary, they look

like a piteous protestation against

the unjust misfortune of those who were being crowned.

They are the symbols of what was fitting for them to have,

of what above all it was right for them to have

at their crowning: for a Lord John Cantacuzenus,

for a Lady Irene, Andronicus Asen’s daughter.

He frequently goes into the tavern

where they’d met each other the month before.

He enquired; but there was nothing they could tell him.

From their words, he understood he’d met

a character who was totally unknown;

one of the many unknown and suspect

youthful figures who would pass through there.

He nonetheless goes to the tavern frequently, at night,

and sits and looks toward the entrance;

he grows weary looking toward the entrance.

Perhaps he’ll come in. Tonight, perhaps he’ll come.

For close to three weeks this is what he does.

His mind has grown sick with wantonness.

On his mouth the kisses have remained.

All his flesh is suffering from the ceaseless yearning.

The feel of the other’s body is upon him.

He wants to be as one with it again.

Not to betray himself: this is what he strives for, of course.

But sometimes he’s almost indifferent.—

Besides, he knows what he’s exposing himself to,

he’s made up his mind. It’s not unlikely that the life he’s living

will lead him to some devastating scandal.

Cemus, son of Menedorus,
      a young Italiote,

passes through his life
      immersed in his amusements:

this is what they’re used to,
      the youths of Greater Greece,

who have been brought up
      with enormous wealth.

But today he is extremely
      (contrary to his nature)

broody and dejected.
      Close to the seashore,

in deepest melancholy,
      he sees that they’re unloading

the vessels with the plunder
      from the Peloponnese.

Spoils of the Greeks:
      
the pillage from Corinth.

O surely it is not
      permissible today,

it isn’t possible
      for the young Italiote

to have any desire
      at all for his amusements.

In the boring village where he works—

an employee in a general

store; extremely young—and where he’s waiting

for another two or three months to pass,

for another two or three months till business tapers off,

so he can make for the city and throw himself

straight into its bustle and amusements:

in the boring village where he’s waiting—

he fell into his bed this evening sick with desire,

all his youth inflamed with carnal yearning,

with beautiful intensity, all his beautiful youth.

And pleasure came into his sleep; within

his sleep he sees and possesses the shape, the flesh he wanted.…

On the subject of proper education and instruction

Apollonius was conversing with a

young man who was building a luxurious

residence in Rhodes. “For my part, when I enter”

the Tyanean said in closing, “a temple, however small,

I should very much prefer to see inside

a statue made of ivory and of gold

than, in a big one, something made of clay, something common.”—

That “clay” and that “common”; so revolting:

humbug that has already deceived

some (who lack sufficient training). That clay and that common.

Cleitus, an extremely amiable

boy of twenty-three or thereabouts—

with the best of educations, with a rare Greek culture—

is gravely ill. The fever has got him,

the one that’s swept through Alexandria this year.

The fever also found him morally wracked,

anguished because his friend, a certain young actor,

has ceased loving him and wanting him.

He’s gravely ill, and his parents are terrified.

And a certain old housemaid who raised him

is also full of fear for Cleitus’s life.

In her terrible anxiety

she is put in mind of an idol

she once worshipped as a girl, before she came here as a maid

to the home of eminent Christians, and herself became a Christian.

She secretly takes some cakes, and wine, and honey.

She brings them before the idol. She chants as many

litanies as she recalls: the bits from either end, the middles. The foolish woman

doesn’t realize that it matters little to the black demon

whether a Christian is or isn’t cured.

The tidings of the outcome of the naval battle, at Actium,

were rather unexpected, to be sure.

But there’s no need to draft a new inscription.

The name alone need change. Instead of (there,

in the final lines) “Having saved the Romans

from that calamitous Octavian,

a man who’s like a parody of Caesar,”

now we’ll put “Having saved the Romans

from that calamitous Marc Antony.”

The entire text fits beautifully.

“To the conqueror, the most glorious,

unsurpassed in every martial action,

astounding for his political achievements,

on behalf of whom the people fervently prayed

for the triumph of Marc Antony”

here, as we said, the switch: “of Caesar,

considering him the finest gift of Zeus—

to the powerful protector of the Greeks,

who benevolently reverences all Greek customs,

is beloved in every region that is Greek,

so richly worthy of encomia,

and of the narration of his deeds at length

in the Greek tongue, both in verse and prose:

in the Greek tongue,
which is the bearer of renown,”

etcetera, etcetera. It all fits brilliantly.

The good old man my father

the one who always loved me just the same,

the good old man my father I now mourn,

who died two days ago, a bit before the break of day.

O Jesus Christ, that I might observe

the commandments of your most holy church

in every deed of mine, in every word,

in every thought, is my endeavor

every day. And from those who deny you

I turn my face.— But now I mourn:

I lament, O Christ, for my father

for all that he was—dreadful to utter it—

a priest at the accursed Serapeum.

In the public houses      and in the lowest dives

of Beirut I wallow.      I didn’t want to stay

in Alexandria: not I.      Tamides has left me;

he went off with the Eparch’s      son so he could get

a villa on the Nile,      a palace in the city.

It wouldn’t do for me      to stay in Alexandria.—

In the public houses      and the lowest dives

of Beirut I wallow.      In low debauchery

I spend my sordid hours.      The only thing that saves me,

like a lasting beauty,      like a perfume that

has stayed on my flesh,      is that, for two years,

Tamides was all mine,      the most exquisite youth,

all mine—not for a house,      nor a villa on the Nile.

A procession of priests and laymen,

representing every walk of life,

moves through the streets, the squares, and gates

of the illustrious city of Antioch.

At the head of the grand, imposing procession

a beautiful youth clad all in white holds the Cross,

his hands raised high: our power and our hope, the Holy Cross.

The pagans, who were so arrogant before,

now diffident and timid, hastily

shrink back from the great procession.

Far from us, far from us may they stay

(as long as they continue to deny their error). The Holy Cross

moves ahead. In all the neighborhoods

where Christian people live in piety

it is the bearer of consolation and joy:

they emerge, the pious folk, at the doorways of their houses

and full of jubilation reverence it—

the power, the salvation of the universe, the Cross.—

This is an annual Christian holiday.

But today, behold, it ends more gloriously.

The empire has been saved at last.

The most accursed, most execrable

Julian is king no more.

For the most pious Jovian let us pray.

Learned sophist, you      who are quitting Syria

and have in mind to write      about Antioch,

it’s fitting that you mention      Mebes in your work.

Mebes the renowned,      who’s undeniably

the most beauteous youth,      the one who’s most beloved,

in all of Antioch.      No one of the other

youths who lead that life—      none of them is paid

as highly as he is.      In order to have Mebes

for only two or three days,      they very often give him

up to a hundred staters.—      I said, In Antioch:

but also in Alexandria,      but also even in Rome,

you cannot find a youth      as desirable as Mebes.

The Chi, so they say, in no wise harmed the city, nor did the Kappa … Finding ourselves interpreters … we learned that letters were the initials of names, and that the former meant Christ, and the latter, Constantius.

—J
ULIAN
,
Misopogon

Was it ever possible for them to give up

their beautiful way of life; the rich array

of their daily entertainments; their glorious

theater where was born a union of Art

and the erotic predilections of the flesh!

Immoral to a point—quite likely to a great extent—

that they were. But they had the satisfaction that their way of life

was the
much discussed
life of Antioch,

pleasure-bent, absolutely elegant.

To give up all of that, and turn to
what,
precisely?