Complete Poems (28 page)

When later the place had quieted down

and the king had been laid out in his grave,

murdered by his nephew (the prince didn’t go to England;

during the journey he escaped from the ship),

a certain Horatio come forward

and tried, by means of detailed explanations,

to vindicate the prince. He said the trip to England

had been a secret plot, and that an order

had been given to kill him there.

(This, however, was never clearly proved.)

He talked, moreover, of wine that had been poisoned,

wine that had been poisoned by the king.

This, it is true, Laertes also said.

But couldn’t he have been lying? couldn’t he be deceived?

And when did he say it? When he had been wounded,

and was dying and his mind was wandering

and it seemed that he was raving.

As for the poisoned weapons,

later it appeared that the king

hadn’t poisoned them at all,

Laertes alone had poisoned them.

But Horatio, whenever it seemed necessary,

would even produce the ghost as a witness.

The ghost said this, said that!

The ghost did this and that!

Even as they heard him saying these things,

most of them, in their consciences,

felt sorry for their goodly king

whom they had slain with phantoms and fairy tales,

so unjustly, and who now was gone.

But Fortinbras, who had profited

and had so easily acquired the throne,

gave great weight and serious attention

to everything that Horatio said.

We were annihilated there at Salamis.

Let us say oá, oá, oá, oá, oá, oá.

Ecbatana and Susa belong to us,

and Persepolis—the loveliest of places.

What were we doing there at Salamis

hauling our fleets and doing battle at sea?

Now we shall return to our Ecbatana

to our Persepolis, and to Susa.

We shall go, but shan’t enjoy them as once we did.

Otototoi, otototoi: this battle at sea,

why must it be, why must it be sought out?

Otototoi, otototoi: why must

we pick ourselves up, abandon everything,

and go there to do battle so wretchedly at sea.

Why is it thus: as soon as someone owns

illustrious Ecbatana, and Susa,

and Persepolis, he straightaway assembles a fleet

and goes forth to battle the Greeks at sea.

Ah yes, of course: let’s not say another word:

otototoi, otototoi, otototoi.

Ah yes, indeed: what’s left for us to say:

oá, oá, oá, oá, oá, oá.

Winters, summers the Watchman sat upon the roof

of the Atreids and watched. Now he’s got good news

to tell. Far away he saw the fires kindle.

And he is glad; besides, his labor’s ended.

Arduous it is, both day and night,

in heat and cold, to have to look for lights

beyond Arachnaeum. Now the longed-for sign

has appeared. When happiness arrives

it gives a lesser joy than anyone

expects. But clearly there is one

thing we gained: we’ve rid ourselves of hopes

and expectations. Many things will happen

to the Atreids. One need not be wise,

since the Watchman saw the light, to surmise

that much. So let’s not overdo it.

The light is good; good are those en route;

and all they say and do is also good.

So let us pray things turn out well. And yet

Argos is capable of making do without

Atreids. Royal houses aren’t everlasting.

People, certainly, will be saying all sorts of things.

As for us, let’s listen. But we won’t be taken in

by “the Indispensable,” by “the One and Only,” by “the Great.”

They always find another straightaway

who’s indispensable, the one and only, and great.

               To the Consul came three sophists who wished to bring him greetings.

               The Consul placed them close to him and told them to be seated.

               He spoke to them politely. And then to them, in jest,

               he said they should be worried. “What makes men envious

               is Fame. One’s rivals are writers, too. You have enemies.”

               Of the three men one replied in words most serious.

“Those who are our enemies today will never harm us.

Our enemies will come afterwards, those who are the new sophists.

When we, by then so very old, shall pitiably be laid

to rest and some of us will be in Hades. Our present-day

words and works will seem quite strange (and even comical

perhaps) because our enemies will change what is “sophistic,”

and style, and trends. Precisely as I myself once did,

and they as well; all of us who so transformed the past.

All of what we represented as beautiful and sound

the enemies will reveal as being ludicrous and groundless

repeating the same things differently (without any great bother).

Just as we ourselves once said the old words in another manner.”

I do not want narcissuses that are real—nor do lilies

               please me, nor do roses that are real.

The gardens they adorn are trite and common. To me

    their flesh gives bitterness, weariness, and grief—

               Their perishable beauties tire me.

Give me artificial blooms—the glories of porcelain and metal—

which shrivel not and do not rot, with forms that do not age.

               Blooms of the exquisite gardens of another place,

               where Theories and Rhythms dwell, and Knowledges.

The blooms I love are fashioned of glass or gold:

               of a faithful Art, the faithful gifts;

dyed in colors more lovely than the natural,

    worked with nacre and with enamel,

               with idealized leaves and shoots.

    They take their grace from Taste, most wise and pure;

in the earth they did not sprout, nor filthily in slime.

               If they have no aroma, perfumes shall we pour,

               and burn the incenses of sentiment before them.

Whoever longs to make his spirit stronger

should leave behind respect and obedience.

Some of the laws are ones that he will keep,

but for the most part he will contravene

both laws and ethics, and he will leave behind

the norms that are received, inadequate.

Many things will he be taught by pleasures.

He will never fear the destructive act;

half the house must be demolished.

Thus will he grow virtuously into knowledge.

At least let me be deceived by delusions, now,

so that I might not feel my empty life.

And I was so close so many times.

And how I froze, and how I was afraid;

why should I remain with lips shut tight;

while within me weeps my empty life,

and my longings wear their mourning black.

To be, so many times, so close

to the eyes, and to the sensual lips,

to the dreamed of, the beloved body.

To be, so many times, so close.

Even though I may not speak about my love—

I may not talk about your hair, or your lips, or your eyes;

still, your face, which I keep inside my soul;

the sound of your voice, which I keep inside my mind;

the September days that dawn within my dreams:

my words and phrases take their shape and color from these,

whatever subject I may touch upon, whatever idea I may be speaking of.

Ah this January, this January’s nights,

when I sit and refashion in my thoughts

those moments and I come upon you,

and I hear our final words, and hear the first.

This January’s despairing nights,

when the vision goes and leaves me all alone.

How swiftly it departs and melts away—

the trees go, the streets go, the houses go, the lights go:

it fades and disappears, your erotic shape.

As I was going down the shameful stair,

you came in the door, and for a moment

I saw your unfamiliar face and you saw me.

Then I hid so you wouldn’t see me again, and you

passed by quickly as you hid your face,

and stole inside the shameful house

where you likely found no pleasure, just as I found none.

And yet the love you wanted, I had to give you;

the love I wanted—your eyes told me so,

tired and suspicious—you had it to give me.

Our bodies sensed and sought each other out;

our blood and skin understood.

But we hid from each other, we two, terrified.

I grew bored with looking at the stage,

and raised my eyes to the loge.

And there inside a box I saw you

with your queer beauty, and your spoilt youth.

And straightaway there came back to my mind

all they’d told me about you, that afternoon,

and my thoughts and my body were stirred.

And whilst I gazed enchanted

at your weary beauty, at your weary youth,

at your discriminating attire,

I imagined you and I depicted you,

in just the way they’d talked about you, that afternoon.

… like the Poseidonians in the Tyrrhenian Gulf whom it befell that, although of Greek origin, they became utterly barbarized, becoming Tyrrhenians or Romans, and changing their language along with many of their customs. Yet to this day they observe a certain Greek holiday, during which they gather together and recall the ancient names and customs; after which, lamenting loudly to each other and weeping, they depart.

—A
THENAEUS

The Greek language the Poseidonians

had forgotten after centuries of intermingling

with Tyrrhenians and Latins, and other foreigners.

The one ancestral feature they retained

was a Greek festival, with elaborate rites,

with lyres and oboes, with contests and garlands.

It was their custom, at the festival’s conclusion,

to tell each other of their ancient practices

and to pronounce Greek words again,

which but a few of them any longer understood.

And their holiday would always end in melancholy.

For they’d remember then that they too were Greeks—

they too Italiotes, once upon a time.

And now how far they’d fallen, what had they become

that they should live and speak like barbarians,

removed—disastrous fate!—from the culture of the Greeks.

But when he heard that the womenfolk were weeping

and were keening for his pitiable state—

madame with her Oriental flailings,

and the slave-girls with their barbarous Greek—

the lofty pride within his soul

awoke, his Italian blood was sickened,

and it all seemed strange to him, indifferent,

everything he’d blindly worshipped until then—

all his frenetic Alexandrian life—

and he said “They ought not weep for him. It is not fitting.

But to glorify him, rather, it behooves them,

he who had turned out to be great lord,

and had amassed so many goods, so many riches.

And now if he has fallen, he falls not humbly,

but as a Roman by a Roman was he vanquished.”

When the Christians brought him to be hanged,

the innocent boy of seventeen,

his mother, who there beside the scaffold

had dragged herself and lay beaten on the ground

beneath the midday sun, the savage sun,

now would moan, and howl like a wolf, a beast,

and then the martyr, overcome, would keen

“Seventeen years only you lived with me, my child.”

And when they took him up the scaffold’s steps

and passed the rope around him and strangled him,

the innocent boy, seventeen years old,

and piteously it hung inside the void,

with the spasms of black agony—

the youthful body, beautifully wrought—

his mother, martyr, wallowed on the ground

and now she keened no more about his years:

“Seventeen days only,” she keened,

“seventeen days only I had joy of you, my child.”

From all I did and from all I said

they shouldn’t try to find out who I was.

An obstacle was there and it distorted

my actions and the way I lived my life.

An obstacle was there and it stopped me

on many occasions when I was going to speak.

The most unnoticed of my actions

and the most covert of all my writings:

from these alone will they come to know me.

But perhaps it’s not worth squandering

so much care and trouble on puzzling me out.

Afterwards—in some more perfect society—

someone else who’s fashioned like me

will surely appear and be free to do as he pleases.

On hearing of a powerful love tremble and be moved

like an aesthete. But then, contented,

remember how many your imagination fashioned for you: those

first: and then the others—lesser—that in your life you’ve

experienced and enjoyed, those more real, and tangible.—

You were not deprived of loves like these.