Poems Read online

  to celebrate the birthday of my girl,

  clapping three times to bring her luck.

  I want a cloudless day, the winds at standstill,

  waves pattering safely on the shore.

  No one’s to grieve today,

  Niobe’s rock will dry her tears,

  halcyons cease lugubrious cries,

  the nightingale refrain from mourning.

  You, darling, favoured by your birth-signs,

  rise, pray to gods for just rewards,

  wash off sleep with pure spring water,

  style your bright hair between your fingers.

  Slip on that dress that first caught my eye,

  keep a garland round your head.

  Ask that your beauty lasts forever

  and your power to rule me never fails.

  When incense drifts from flower-decked altars,

  and propitious flames burn through the house,

  think of nightfall, the time for feasting, drinking,

  saffron pot-pourris that tease your nostrils.

  The flute-playing fades into dancing,

  risqué talk stirs your appetites,

  amorous tiffs hold sleep at bay,

  the street outside echoes to the noise.

  We’ll throw dice to decide which of us

  is smacked the harder by Cupid’s wing.

  Then when enough cups have been downed,

  Venus conducts the night-time rituals

  we’ll observe in our bedroom:

  your birthday’s climax.

  III.11

  No surprises if a woman drives my life

  or holds me, a man, subject to her laws;

  you accuse me of being a worthless failure

  because I can’t break the chains, shatter the yoke.

  I used to talk like that in my younger days:

  now I say – learn from my example.

  Medea clamped a yoke of carbon steel

  on fire-breathing bulls, sowed armed men in the ground,

  shut the mouth of the guardian snake

  so the golden fleece could go home with Jason.

  Penthesilea, the Russian, fired arrows from

  horseback against the Greek armada;

  when her gold helmet was stripped from her face,

  her beauty slew her slayer.

  Omphale, bathed in the gold-bearing Lydian lake,

  rose so high in beauty’s hall of fame

  she had him who brought world peace and raised the Pillars

  put his horny hand to the spinning wheel.

  Semiramis built the city of Babylon,

  a solid piece of work with baked brick walls

  so wide two chariots could pass on top

  without touching axle hubs.

  She channelled the Euphrates through her citadel

  and made Central Asia bend to her rule.

  Why put heroes in the dock or even gods?

  (Jupiter brings disrepute on himself and his house).

  What of him who blotted our army’s honour?

  Or That Woman serviced by her manservants?

  The price she set for her obscene marriage was

  Rome’s walls and our senators plighted to her kingdom.

  Noxious Alexandria’s a fertile seedbed

  for treachery; Egyptian sand that soaked up

  so much of our blood robbed Pompey of three triumphs.

  There’s no day can wipe out Rome’s infamy;

  better he had died at Pharsalus than there,

  even with neck bowed to his father-in-law.

  The bitch-queen from the fleshpots of the Delta

  (what else do you expect from the Macedon line?)

  tried to set baying Anubis on Jupiter,

  menace the Tiber with the Nile,

  drive back the Roman trumpet with the tambourine,

  chase our warships with felucca poles,

  hang smelly mosquito nets on the Tarpeian rock,

  legislate among Marius’ trophies on the Capitol.

  Pointless to have smashed the power of Tarquin,

  proud by nature, Proud by name,

  if She was to be endured. Saved Rome should chant

  Augustus’ triumph, pray his life be long.

  She fled to the Nile’s meandering mouths,

  held out her hands for Roman shackles,

  watched the sacred asps bite her arms,

  and her limbs start on sleep’s long road to nowhere.

  ‘With such a leader, how could you fear me?’

  she said, her tongue thick with wine…

  The city high on seven hills oversees the world…

  The gods founded its walls and still protect them:

  with Caesar here, why would Rome fear Jove?

  Don’t talk of Scipio’s fleets, Camillus’ standards

  or those Pompey captured at the Bosphorus,

  the spoils seized from Hannibal and beaten Syphax,

  or Pyrrhus’ glory shivered at our feet.

  Curtius won his statue plugging a gap;

  Decius broke enemy ranks spurring his horse;

  Horatius’ alley recalls the hacked-down bridge;

  a crow gave Corvinus a permanent name.

  Apollo on Levkas will tell how the battle lines

  were turned: one day’s war ended so much.

  Sailor, whether steering for port or leaving it,

  think Caesar right across the Ionian Sea.

  III.12

  How could you, Postumus? Leave a pleading Galla

  to go off soldiering under Augustus’ standards?

  Was the glory of Parthian spoils of so much value

  her entreaties merited such disregard?

  You gold-diggers all, may I say, deserve one fate,

  or anyone preferring war to true love’s bed.

  You’re mad to wearily drink from your helmet

  Aras water, a filthy cloak over your head,

  while Galla’s nerves are frayed by stupid rumours

  that you’ve served with utmost bravery – but you’re dead,

  slain by a chain-mailed knight upon an armoured

  horse, or a Persian arrow spilled your blood,

  and what’s left to cry over’s coming in a pot

  (a common means of transport from those parts).

  You’re truly blessed in the woman you’ve got –

  three or four times more than your just deserts.

  What does a girl do when her husband’s left,

  seeing Rome instructs her in debauchery’s art?

  Don’t worry: Galla won’t be won by gifts

  and won’t remember your hardness of heart.

  Whenever fate returns you in one piece,

  loyal Galla will wrap your neck round in her arms.

  For your admirable spouse they’ll compare you to Ulysses –

  lengthy delays never did him any harm:

  ten years’ war, the Cicones killed when Ismara fell,

  the Cyclops’ eye burnt to eternal night,

  Circe’s tricks, the lotus’ magic spells,

  Scylla and Charybdis raging in and out,

  Lampetie’s cattle still heard, on spits, to low

  (she’d pastured them for her father, the Sun),

  flight from the chamber of weeping Calypso,

  winter nights and days just swimming on,

  visiting the silent souls’ twilight home,

  passing the Sirens’ lyres with crew deafened,

  the old bow dusted off for suitor doom,

  and so his wandering came to an end:

  all worth it for that wifely chastity.

  And constant Galla outstrips Penelope.

  III.13

  Why do grasping women make nights so pricey

  (you ask), why are fortunes lost through venery?

  There’s one manifest cause for all these crashes:

  the road to luxury has been made too easy.

  Indian miner-an
ts excavate gold,

  pearls are born from ocean foam like Venus,

  Tyre exports its purple dyes,

  Arab spice-growers bring cinnamon:

  such weaponry storms any girl’s castle walls,

  overwhelms a Penelope’s disdain.

  Housewives parade dressed in the wealth of toyboys,

  the in-your-face spoils of their degradation.

  The courteous rituals of asking, giving,

  are gone: the wallet ends all hesitation.

  The Indian, bronzed in dawn’s waters,

  enjoys a felicitous funeral law.

  When the torch is thrown into his pyre,

  there stands a pious crowd of wives, hair loose,

  contesting who, still living, will follow

  her husband: not to die is a disgrace.

  The winner exults, clasping the flames to her breast,

  pressing her burnt lips to her man’s.

  No brides like that round here, no woman

  a loyal Evadne or Penelope.

  The young lived quietly once in the country,

  their bank accounts the harvest and the tree.

  Presents were quinces shaken from the branch,

  panniers filled with purple blackberries,

  hand-picked violets, a mix of lilies

  shining in their wicker baskets,

  grapes brought on the vine,

  a bird of multi-coloured plumage.

  For these emoluments the girls rewarded

  rural men in discreet hollows,

  a fawn-skin blanket for the clinching lovers

  on natural, thick grass beds,

  a stooping pine shading them where they lay.

  The ram spontaneously led well-fed ewes

  back to the Arcadian shepherd’s unlocked pen.

  Seeing goddesses naked was no crime;

  divinities of both genders guarding the fields

  spoke kindly, altars were benign:

  ‘Out for hares, my friend, whoever you are,

  or birds, perhaps, in my valley?

  Call me, Pan, from the cliff to go with you,

  whether you hunt prey with limed twigs or dogs.’

  The groves are deserted now, the shrines closed,

  religion dead, gold the new deity.

  Gold has driven out trust, gold buys justice,

  law chases gold: no law means no conscience.

  The charred door testified to Brennus’ sacrilege

  when he attacked Apollo’s sanctuary:

  Parnassus, shaken to its bay-crowned summit,

  spewed an avalanche on the Gallic army.

  Thracian Polymestor was a godless

  host, pocketing Polydorus’ gold.

  And Amphiaraus vanished with his horses

  for the golden bangles on Eriphyla’s arms.

  I’ll say it – and I hope I’m a false prophet:

  its wealth will be proud Rome’s decline and fall.

  I’m right, but no one listens.

  Well, Cassandra

  should have been believed about the fall of Troy;

  she alone said Paris would seal its fate

  and the horse slithering inside was a trick.

  Her ‘ravings’ could have saved her land, her father;

  her unheeded tongue proved the gods don’t lie.

  III.14

  Your gyms, Sparta, have many admirable features,

  but especially the exercising of young wenches;

  for you see no harm in sports where a girl strips off

  and trains her body alongside male athletes.

  The ball flies from hand to hand,

  the hooked stick clatters on the rolling hoop;

  a woman stands at the finish-line covered in dust,

  or gets a bruise or two in the all-in wrestling;

  she happily straps the boxing-gloves on her forearms,

  swings the heavy discus to hurl; pounds

  the ring on horseback, a sword at her white flank,

  a bronze helmet shielding her maidenly head,

  like a warring squadron of topless Amazons

  roaming the Turkish plains.

  Sometimes she follows the Spartan hounds down the ridges

  of Taygetus, her hair sprinkled with frost.

  Or think Castor and Pollux on the banks of Eurotas,

  one a winner with horses, the other with fists,

  and Helen taking up arms with them, breasts bare,

  not blushing – they say – before her immortal brothers.

  Spartan law calls for no segregation of lovers,

  you can be beside your woman in the street;

  no need to fear a guard on a locked-up girl

  or the crushing retaliation of a jealous man:

  no need for a go-between, you can speak yourself

  of your business, and no rebuffs after lengthy delays.

  No foreign fashions to trick the roving eye

  or tiresome styling of hair drenched in scent.

  But Roman girls go out hemmed in by a mob,

  the street so packed you can’t get a fingertip through;

  which ones are approachable, which fob you off with words,

  you’ll never find out: the lover treads a blind alley.

  If you followed Spartan laws (not to say their sports),

  I’d be much fonder of you, Rome, for that.

  III.15

  When I put away boyhood clothing, and inhibitions

  too, I was free to explore the paths of love;

  Lycinna, who asked for nothing in return,

  partnered my first nights, refining my unschooled urges.

  In the few years that have passed since then, as I

  recall, I’ve barely exchanged ten words with her.

  Your love buried everything, no woman after

  draped her sweet chains about my neck …

  Don’t let any gossip about me trouble your ears,

  I shall love only you even on the funeral pyre,

  as I hope the course of that love will run smooth

  and no night will come when I lie awake without you.

  Hell hath no fury, etcetera, I know,

  but leave Lycinna alone – she doesn’t deserve it.

  Exemplum: Dirce was enraged by claims

  (true enough) that Antiope had bedded Lycus.

  Many a time the queen tore out Antiope’s

  beautiful hair and slapped her soft face hard.

  She loaded her maid with impossible tasks,

  made her lay her head on the rough ground,

  gave her dark, dank quarters to live in,

  even denied her a miserable cup of water.

  Jupiter, why could you not help Antiope in

  her time of need, the hard chain bruising her hands?

  Call yourself a god, you should be ashamed your girl

  was a slave in bondage: who else could she turn to?

  Alone, she summoned all her body’s strength

  and broke the queen’s shackles from both her wrists.

  Fearfully she scaled the peaks of Mount Cithaeron;

  it was night, frost sprinkled her wretched bed.

  A river’s indistinct rush terrified her,

  sounding like her mistress after her.

  She was driven from the mountain shelter – a mother’s

  tears left Zethus unmoved, though Amphion softened.

  As, when the churning sea is stilled

  and the south and north winds cease going head to head,

  the sound of sand sucked down the shore subsides,

  Antiope bowed her knees and fell.

  Pity at last; her sons saw their mistake.

  The old man, fit to rear Jove’s offspring,

  gave the boys back their mother; and those boys

  tied Dirce to a wild bull’s head for dragging.

  Jupiter’s doing, Antiope: you won;

  Dirce was pulled to die in many places.

&nbs
p; Blood soaked Zethus’ fields; Amphion sang

  a victory ode from the crag of Aracynthus.

  III.16

  Her letter reaches me at midnight,

  summoning me now (if not sooner) to Tivoli,

  where white-roofed towers bestride

  the Aniene’s plunge to spreading pools.

  What to do? Sally forth in pitch darkness

  and risk violent hands around my throat?

  Yet if that fear makes me delay her order,

  her tears will hurt me more than nocturnal hoodlums.

  I made that mistake once. Result: a year’s rejection.

  It’ll be her hands that won’t be gentle with me.

  Wait, though. Lovers are sacred – no one will harm them:

  they can walk down the middle of Sciron’s street.

  You’re in love? You can stroll in the badlands of Scythia:

  who would be such a barbarian as to strike you?

  Anaemic lovers’ blood wouldn’t even stain

  a villain; Venus rides bodyguard for her own.

  The moon lights the way, the stars pick out the hazards,

  Amor goes ahead, waving blazing torches;

  mad dogs keep their jaws to themselves.

  The road is always safe for such a traveller.

  Even if my adventure led to certain death,

  such an end would be worth a high price to me.

  She would bring perfume, decorate my tomb

  with garlands, keep watch sitting at my gravestone.

  I pray she does not bury me in a crowded spot

  where the mob tramps by on some thoroughfare.

  That would desecrate a lover’s resting place.

  Let tree leaves shade me in secluded ground,

  or inter me amid anonymous sand dunes.

  I don’t want my name displayed at the roadside.

  III.17

  I kneel, Bacchus, at your altar,

  fill my sails with breezes, father,

  you who know the shoals of love;

  witness Ariadne, carried,

  Bacchus, by your lynx-drawn chariot

  to sidereal life above.

  You can quell the storms of Venus,