Puerilities Read online

  Oral—and aural—verse, which is to say virtually all poetry written before the last and, as far as literature is concerned, rather lamentable century, just what is still generally regarded as poetry, and which still manifests itself in popular music, for instance “rap,” at once rhymed, rhythmical, and as extemporaneous as jazz, has its own unspoken rules and rights-of-way.

  The metrical form of the originals I have rather represented than slavishly imitated, as I tried to in my purely accentual dactylic versions of the Idylls of Theocritus (Atheneum, 1982), The Homeric Hymns (Atheneum, 1972), and Hesiod’s Works and Days and Theogony (University of Chicago Press, 2000). There the form was stichic, and as seemed to befit unrhymed single lines following each other in ever varied succession, I have used not the commonest, indeed only ordinary such stichic English meter, blank verse, but chose to echo the sound of the Greek more directly, allowing for the differences beween quantitative and stressed verse (the ambiguities and subtleties of which would require a larger and longer digression than this short preface would allow) in six stressed lines, basically dactylic but permitting as much spondaic pseudo-resolution as the matter suggested and our language permits. The predominant, almost the only, form here is not stichic but strophic: an unrhymed couplet repeated ad libitum, consisting of the commonest meter in Greek and Latin, the dactylic hexameter, followed by a line composed of its first two feet, plus one syllable, of that metrical unit the so-called hemieps, repeated, thus forming the second most popular classical unit, the elegiac couplet, which may be roughly thumped out thus:

  tumpidy tumpidy tumpidy tumpidy tumpidy tumtum

  tumpidy tumpidy tum tumpidy tumpidy tum

  Replacing the longum with an ictus—the long syllable with a stressed one—we would get something like the following English elegiac couplet:

  Nor are some authors the only anonymous blooms in this

  garland:

  Most of the boys might as well be heteronymous too.

  While this seems not only fairly accurate as representation, but not unpleasing, the effect, much-repeated, is rather sedative than, as an epigram should be, piquant, surprising and evocative, in its basic sense of a wake-up call. Therefore the reader should do as I did after much experimentation with the above model: more or less abandon it altogether in favor of a more familiar native meter, the rhymed couplet or quatrain, such as I used to represent the elegiac couplets in Ovid’s Heroines (Yale, 1991). Rhyme, though it certainly does exist in Greek as in all languages in the crudest manifestation as assonance and consonance, was not deployed unless for special, subliminal effect (see the rhyming pun in Callimachus: XLIII); the morphology of the language made terminal rhyme, which is all most of us hear as rhyme at all, undesirable as too easy: hence all these quantitative evasions thereof.

  The language into which a poem is translated must be of more interest and importance to the reader of that language than the original tongue, and certainly should be so to the translator. A verse translation is not merely a trot or paraphrase of the original; to succeed it should, and must, be a wholly convincing and pleasurable poetic experience in its own right. Therefore guided by Aristotle’s criterion of effect above all, I have plumped for what I deem the most effective means of simulacry, as shown in my versions. In a few cases I thought the tone and subject matter more suited to a limerick form than the staider couplet: as the limerick is the most popular indeed vulgar verse form in contemporary usage, it seemed to fit some of this badinage better. Here I might offer the reader two versions of the same elegiac couplet and ask him or her to chose a preference, if he or she can:

  V STRATO

  Pale skins I like, but honey-colored more,

  And blond and brunette boys I both adore.

  I never blackball brown eyes, but above

  All, eyes of scintillating black I love.

  [Limerick]

  Are pale skins my favorite, or

  Honey-hued adolescents? What is more,

  Liking blond and brunette,

  I love brown eyes—and yet

  Scintillating black eyes I adore.

  As I am no textual scholar but a poet who knows which texts make sense and are aesthetically preferable I shall abbreviate a long excursion into the wilderness of textualism by thanking the Muse—here Erato, for the ancients had muses for everything, even for smut—for preserving this bouquet of real and artificial flowers in a comparatively unified and simplified form. In the case of rare lacunae and gaps in the text I have silently bridged the gap, remembering that asyndeton and non sequiturs are also rhetorical devices. Throughout, my aim has been not archaeological but almost authorial, to produce rather than reproduce with all the resources of our resourceful language, something that I hope will surpass a mere simulacrum. I trust that these epigrams, so often but pleasantries, will stand as valid poems in their own light: not symphonies like the Homeric poets and all their imitators, but bagatelles.

  PUERILITIES

  I STRATO

  “Begin with Zeus,” Aratus said; but, Muse,

  I do not think I’ll trouble you today.

  If hanging out with boys is what I choose

  To do, does that concern you anyway?

  II STRATO

  Don’t look for pious Priam in these pages,

  Niobe’s tears, Medea’s jealous rages,

  Nor Itys and his nightingales—enough

  My predecessors scribbled of such stuff!

  But Love, surrounded by the simpering Graces,

  And Bacchus are ill-suited to straight faces.

  III STRATO

  Diodorus, boys’ things come in three

  Shapes and sizes; learn them handily:

  When unstripped it’s a dick,

  But when stiff it’s a prick:

  Wanked, you know what its nickname must be.

  IV STRATO

  A twelve-year-old looks fetching in his prime,

  Thirteen’s an even more beguiling time.

  That lusty bloom blows sweeter at fourteen;

  Sexier yet a boy just turned fifteen.

  The sixteenth year seems perfectly divine,

  And seventeen is Jove’s tidbit, not mine.

  But if you fall for older fellows, that

  Suggests child’s play no more but tit-for-tat.

  V STRATO

  Pale skins I like, but honey-coloured more,

  And blond and brunette boys I both adore.

  I never blackball brown eyes, but above

  All, eyes of scintillating black I love.

  VI STRATO

  That ass is the metrical equivalent

  Of cash I discovered once by accident.

  VII STRATO

  Loose girls lose their grip. They wear cheap scent.

  Their kisses aren’t sincere or innocent.

  Sweet smut is one thing they’re no good at talking.

  Their looks are sly. The worst is a bluestocking.

  Moreover, fundamentally they’re cold;

  They’ve nothing for a groping hand to hold.

  VIII STRATO

  Remarking as I passed a flower-stall

  A lad entwining buds and blooms together,

  Smitten, I paused to ask him in a small

  Voice how much his garland cost and whether

  He’d sell it me? He hung his head and blushed

  Like a rose: “Go on! or Dad will take a dim

  View . . .” I bought a token wreath and rushed

  Off home to bedeck and beseech the gods for him.

  IX STRATO

  Delicious Diodorus, ripe for bed,

  We’ll not forsake you even when you wed.

  X STRATO

  Notwithstanding that hairs, as I feared,

  On your temples have lately appeared,

  And your chin and your cheek,

  My beloved’s physique

  Is still mine, though he’s growing a beard.

  XI STRATO

  When I had Philostratus last n
ight

  He was tight and did everything right,

  But I couldn’t get hard;

  Now my friends will discard

  Me for not doing all Sodom might.

  XII FLACCUS

  So fair, (but to his suitors so unfair),

  Lado has barely grown some pubic hair

  Yet loves a lad: what swift comeuppance there!

  XIII STRATO

  I surprised once some hardy young chaps

  Playing doctor, near to a relapse.

  When they begged me keep mum,

  I replied, “I’ll play dumb,

  If you’re willing to treat me, perhaps.”

  XIV DIOSCORIDES

  If Deophilus, who was no more

  Than a child when he kissed me before,

  As an adult should kiss

  His admirers like this,

  They’ll be beating a path to his door.

  XV STRATO

  A board at the baths pinched Graphicus’ ass, revealing

  That even wood is capable of feeling.

  XVI STRATO

  Don’t be coy, Philostratus: divine

  Love can trample on your heart and mine.

  Only kiss me today;

  You’ll discover one day

  Yours are favours that some may decline.

  XVII ANONYMOUS

  The love of women leaves me cold; desire

  For men, though, scorches me with coals of fire.

  As women are the weaker sex, my yen

  Is stronger, warmer, more intense for men.

  XVIII ALPHEIUS OF MYTILENE

  A loveless life is hell, no doubt about

  It; one can’t say or do a thing without

  Longing. If Xenophilus came in sight,

  Slow though I am, I’d reach the speed of light.

  Far from avoiding what you can’t control,

  Pursue it. Love’s the whetstone of the soul.

  XIX ANONYMOUS

  I can’t befriend you, eager though I am:

  You ask for nothing, neither will you grant

  Me anything I ask for; adamant,

  For all my gifts you do not give a damn.

  XX JULIUS LEONIDAS

  Is Zeus carousing with the blacks, I wonder,

  Or visiting Danaë disguised as gold,

  That he has not picked up fair Periander—

  Or is he not the paederast of old?

  XXI STRATO

  How long need we sneak kisses, with oblique

  Glances at one another wink and peek?

  How long chat in this inconclusive way,

  Adding delay to meaningless delay?

  Phido, let’s waste no chance to work things out,

  Before the killjoy hairs begin to sprout.

  XXII SCYTHINUS

  Calamity and conflagration! Strife!

  Elissus has attained the time of life,

  Sixteen, that’s made for love, and he has all

  The adolescent graces great and small:

  A honeyed voice, a mouth that’s sweet to kiss,

  And an accommodating orifice.

  But, “Look, don’t touch!” he tells me. What a fate!

  I’ll lie awake all night and—meditate.

  XXIII MELEAGER

  I used to laugh at young men who were not

  Successful in their wooing. Now I’m caught;

  Myiscus, on your gate winged Love has placed

  Me, labelled as, “A Trophy of the Chaste.”

  XXIV TULLIUS LAUREAS

  Should my Polemo come home safe to me

  Just as he was when first he went to sea,

  Phoebus, I’ll not forget the cockerell

  I promised you if everything went well.

  If he returns with either more or less

  Than he had then, my vows are meaningless.

  He’s come back with a beard! If that’s the thing

  He prayed for, let him make the offering!

  XXV STATYLLIUS FLACCUS

  I promised you a cock, Apollo, when

  Polemo came home safe to me again.

  He came, but not to stay. His cheeks defaced

  By fuzz, he fled from me with cruel haste.

  No cock for you, Apollo! Would you cheat

  Me with stubble in place of cream of wheat?

  XXVI STATYLLIUS FLACCUS

  If my Polemo came back good as new,

  Phoebus, I swore to sacrifice to you.

  He’s safe but not himself. Whiskers detract

  A lot from his homecoming, that’s a fact—

  Whiskers he prayed for! Let him pay the price

  Of my vain hopes, and make the sacrifice!

  XXVII STATYLLIUS FLACCUS

  Seeing Polemo off smooth-cheeked as you,

  Phoebus, I pledged to get him back again

  One cock. Poor me! he’s not the boy I knew:

  His disobliging bristles I disdain.

  Why pluck that inoffensive bird in vain?

  While you are at it, pluck Polemo too!

  XXVIII NUMENIUS OF TARSUS

  Cyrus is serious, no open book—

  But what do I care as long as I can look?

  XXIX ALCAEUS

  Protarchus won’t say Yes, but later on

  He will—once all the fires of youth are gone.

  XXX ALCAEUS

  Your legs, Nicander, are becoming hairy;

  Take care this doesn’t happen to your ass,

  Or you will find your lovers getting very

  Scarce. Irrevocably, your youth will pass.

  XXXI PHANIAS

  By Themis, and this wine which makes me drunk,

  Pamphilus, I think your lease on love has shrunk.

  Hair on your thighs and on your cheeks suggests

  Burgeoning heterosexual interests.

  But if there’s one spark left, don’t be a tease!

  Love overlooks no opportunities.

  XXXII THYMOCLES

  “Loveliest,”—remember when I made

  That hackneyed observation?—“is the spring,

  But swifter than a bird upon the wing.”

  Now see how fast your bloom begins to fade.

  XXXIII MELEAGER

  A peach was Heraclitus when—don’t scoff!—

  Still Heraclitus; now he’s past his prime

  His hairy hide puts all assailants off.

  On your cheeks too the curse will come in time.

  XXXIV AUTOMEDON

  I dined with coach Demetrius yesterday,

  The luckiest of men! While one lad lay

  Upon his lap, one by his shoulder stood;

  One poured the drinks, another served the food.

  I joked, “This foursome is a pretty sight!

  And do you also coach the boys at night?”

  XXXV DIOCLES

  Somebody said when snubbed, “Is Damon so

  Beautiful he doesn’t say hello?

  Time will exact revenge when, bye and bye,

  Grown hairy, he greets men who won’t reply.”

  XXXVI ASCLEPIADES OF ADRAMYTTIUM

  Now you put out, when prickly down appears

  Between your legs and underneath your ears.

  “That feels so good!” you cry, “Do that again!”

  But who prefers dry stubble to whole grain?

  XXXVII DIOSCORIDES

  Cupid, who loves mankind to tantalize,

  Sculpted Sotarchus’ bum for fun in butter,

  Provoking Zeus: those buns looked better

  Than even Ganymede’s ambrosial thighs.

  XXXVIII RHIANUS

  Oh, what an ass! so gracefully lubricious

  You never even leave old men in peace.

  Tell me, what boy do you adorn, delicious

  Bottom? The ass replied, “Menecrates.”

  XXXIX ANONYMOUS

  Nicander’s finished, there is not a trace

  Of bloom or loveliness left in a face

  I called divine.
So, mortal youths, beware

  Immortal thoughts; remember pubic hair.

  XL ANONYMOUS

  Don’t take my clothes off! View me as a kind

  Of statue, draped so almost nothing shows.

  If you look for my naked charms, you’ll find

  Amid a scratchy bush my rosebud grows.