produces
a sensual intensity, which good health does not know …”
A fragment of a missive
from the youth Imenus (of patrician stock), infamous
in Syracuse for dissipation,
in the dissipated times of Michael the Third.
[1915; 1919; 1919]
Aboard the Ship
It certainly resembles him, this small
pencil likeness of him.
Quickly done, on the deck of the ship:
an enchanting afternoon.
The Ionian Sea all around us.
It resembles him. Still, I remember him as handsomer.
To the point of illness: that’s how sensitive he was,
and it illumined his expression.
Handsomer, he seems to me,
now that my soul recalls him, out of Time.
Out of Time. All these things, they’re very old—
the sketch, and the ship, and the afternoon.
[1919; 1919]
Of Demetrius Soter (162–150 B.C.)
His every expectation turned out wrong!
He used to imagine that he’d do celebrated deeds,
would end the shame that since the time of the Battle
of Magnesia had ground his homeland down.
That Syria again would be a mighty power,
with her armies, with her fleets,
with her great encampments, with her wealth.
He endured it, grew embittered in Rome
when he sensed, in the conversation of his friends,
the scions of the great houses,
in the midst of all the delicacy and politesse
that they showed toward him, toward the son
of King Seleucus Philopator—
when he sensed that nonetheless there was always a hidden
disdain for the dynasties of the Greek East:
which were in decline, not up to serious affairs,
quite unfit for the leadership of peoples.
He’d withdraw, alone, and grow indignant, and swear
that it wouldn’t be the way they thought, at all.
Look, he has the will:
would struggle, would do it, would rise up.
If only he could find a way to reach the East,
manage to get away from Italy—
and all of this power that he has
in his soul, all this vehemence,
he’d spread it to the people.
Ah, if only he could be in Syria!
He was so little when he left his homeland
that he only dimly remembers what it looks like.
But in his thoughts he’s always studied it
like something sacred you approach on bended knee,
like an apparition of a beautiful place, like a vision
of cities and of harbors that are Greek.—
And now?
Now, hopelessness and dejection.
They were right, those lads in Rome.
It’s not possible for them to survive, the dynasties
that the Macedonian Conquest had produced.
No matter: he himself had spared no effort;
as much as he was able, he’d struggled on.
Even in his black discouragement,
there’s one thing that still he contemplates
with lofty pride: that even in defeat
he shows the same indomitable valor to the world.
The rest—was dreams and vain futility.
This Syria—it barely even resembles his homeland;
it is the land of Heracleides and of Balas.
[1915; 1919]
If Indeed He Died
“Where has he gone off to, where did the Sage disappear?
Following his many miracles,
and the great renown of his instruction
which was diffused among so many peoples,
he suddenly went missing and no one has learned
with any certainty what has happened
(nor has anyone ever seen his tomb).
Some have put it about that he died in Ephesus.
But Damis didn’t write that. Damis never
wrote about the death of Apollonius.
Others said that he went missing on Lindos.
Or perhaps that other story is
true, that his assumption took place on Crete,
in the ancient shrine of Dictynna.—
But nonetheless we have the miraculous,
the supernatural apparition of him
to
