Joshua's Epicurean Themed Poetry Megathread

I'm just putting this here to gather all of my relevant work so I can find it more easily. Perhaps one day, with a good deal more work, it will turn itself into a slender paperback.

Song of the Sage

In imitation of Tolkien

The world was old, and ruined walls

Had told the tale of countless falls,

Unnumbered tears, and silent bones

In buried graves and catacombs

Of cities dead when Rome was young;

When Troy was lost, and poets sung.

Alone the Evening Star gave light

When Epicurus rose by night.

Alone he trod on grassy leas

And scanned for Law in changing seas;

He grappled Chaos to the hilt

And knew it for the lies it built;

He wrung the truth from every blade

That turned beneath his mental spade;

The secret, deep and unalloyed,

Of atoms bound in endless void!

And when he raised at last his eyes

Upon the splendid starlit skies,

He laughed to think of Plato's chimes

And probed the deeps of space and time.

And where the priests saw godly powers

He saw ten thousand earths like ours!

Nor could the courage of his soul

Be daunted by its mortal toll.

The light that rose upon that morn

For seven centuries was borne;

Does it rest too beneath the hill?

I cannot tell; I cannot tell.

On Turkish shores the carven stone

Still whispers in a dulcet tone,

And Roman scrolls in Vulcan's cache

Still slumber in the mountain ash.

But there, outshining all the rest,

Still Venus lingers in the West.

The Heron

O Heron wan in water wading!

Thou opus of untailored fashion—

Sure-footed on the shoreline's footing—

A tulle train, dawnlight's glisten,

Gowns thy form in matchless morning!

Heron! Ready in verdure reedy—

Agéd angler, weedmidst waiting,

Patient, still in silence stolen

From the olden deep unending

'Til the wide world's wild breaking—

Hunter haunting on the march and

interstice of world and world;

Sea and sky, blade of beak

Azure upon azure rending—

Virtue of a vise unyielding.

What crooked timber frames thy neck?

Methinks that it is not so stiff.

Whence the whittling of thy wing?

What the aurum of thine eye?

Where, thy heartblood's ceaseless spring?

Are thou Plato's man-of-gold,

Who rules a tribe of bronzéd fins?

Or yet a hermit cynical,

Who tossed aside his needless dish?

Is this thy sandy portico?

Nay, for thou art too like me:

We bear the stamp of origins.

Fatherless thou wert so feathered,

Motherless milked on thy sweet streams,

And here, alone, we stand together—

No more! Aye, fly! Fly to thine pleasure

Great noble bird, sun-midst sailing,

Prow a-gleaming, southward seeking;

Seek thee still a sweeter shore

And I, a sweet philosophy.

Yet I will linger here a time

Tasting of the morning's fruits—

'Ere long the yawning sea shall call:

The tide shall fail, and then the light,

And we shall mingle, you and I

Void with void, and mote with mote.

Iowa Fields

to Epicurus

I saw Ilium gleam

As her walls, in a dream,

Watched her sons return home on their shields--

Saw the marching Greek host

In the corn, and the coast

Of Asia in

Iowa fields.

The philosophers spoke

In the shade of the oak

As the willows and cottonwoods reeled

In an October gale

Blowing hearty and hale,

Pages flipping in

Iowa fields

And I wrote out your name

On the face of the stream,

Writ in water but never repealed--

Made your garden to bloom

Like the yucca, festooned;

Flowering lonely in

Iowa fields.

And your precepts I pressed

Like a stamp to my chest--

And a ring on my finger revealed

Where your likeness was cast

And a voice from the past

Rose up godlike in

Iowa fields.

I hoped to see thee again

By the feld or the fen

When the bells of the Twentieth pealed.

But--alas! lies my ring

At the end of all things

In a grave beneath

Iowa fields.

Hermarchus

Seeing the bust of Epicurus

Ho! I--Master, I held from grief. We laid

Your body to its rest beneath the sky

And sun. What then to grieve? Thy atoms fly

Scattered, thy soul at more than peace which said

"Death is nothing"--but here! Thy sculptured head

Is wreathed with leaves of bay. Ah, how can I

Fall to grief? Your students with laughing cries

Honor you--your 'membrance blesses their bread.

Should scholarchs fail, and birds alone here warble--

Should vine and olive go to sage and sorrel--

Still aged men would carve your like in marble

And shining youth crown thy head with laurel.

This poem is written in the form of a sestina, with repeating end-words. The first stanza sets the pattern; each subsequent stanza recycles the words according to the one before, in this formula: 5, 2, 4, 3, 6, 1. Because the second-line word goes second in the next stanza as well, its position never changes. That word is "garden"--stable, reliable, unaltered.

The scene of the poem is the city written about by Lucian.

Abonoteichus - a dialogue

Scholarch:

By winds and waves that storm our coast for ages!

By sighing Aphrodite in her garden,

Where hast thou been my son, for there is fire

Deep in thine eyes, and strife upon thy temple?

What trial shakes thy soul with trembling atoms,

Sieging thy mind like a beleaguered city?

Ephebos:

I strain my limbs for use of all their atoms

And refuge take in this the soothing garden,

For multitudes are gathered at the temple

Where piled scrolls are ravaged in the fire!

A sickness lies upon this seething city,

And men disgrace the memory of ages!

Scholarch:

Ah--is that all? Have ye not seen this city

Charméd by snakes, defiling grove and garden,

With grim religion spreading fast as fire?

Have ye not seen them lurking by that temple--

and of all sexes, qualities, and ages--

Who rain on Epicurus scorn like atoms?

Ephebos:

But can it have been so in all past ages?

Can truth have grown free only in a garden

Which ought by rights have garlanded a temple?

Will all mankind forsake that sacred fire,

Spurning pleasure--denying void and atoms?

Naught but Euxine waters would cleanse this city!

Scholarch:

Peace son! Their worth is measured not in atoms.

Some yet will seek true health, and this our garden

Will beckon them--a solitary fire

Against the darkness; a bright green-grass temple

Unroofed to starlight, shining like a city,

And crowned with all the wisdom of the ages!

Ephebos:

Wilt thou then that we leave for that city?

Scholarch:

And bear the fruit of peace from out this garden.

Ephebos:

Even into the shadow of that temple?

Scholarch:

For Epicurus, even unto fire.

Ephebos:

And make his wisdom echo through the ages--

Scholarch:

And calm that rage, that rends his scrolls to atoms.

The Lighthouse

Perched on shores of treacherous shoals

Where water heaves and, crashing, rolls

Beneath the beam that scans for souls,

The weathered prow and turning lens

That mortal after mortal tends

Stands firm unto the end of ends.

Hymn to Venus

a fragment

Strange star! Light, lingering in the West, whoso

Wouldst gleam this eve o'er silken river and

The silt hills, and thread the hanging grotto

Of dew-laden boughs with thy shimmering strand--

You, who call forth the sun upon the morn,

Setting fire to heaven, spreading light

And vital heat to the meridian!

In wondrous light all things on Earth are born,

Reared, and given to passionate delight

In the sweetness of life!

Cytherean

Maid, keep you by night to some secret

Tryst? Awaiting a youth handsome and bold

To steal over the garden wall and get

Your hand in his, and kiss you as he holds?

O Venus, you! Whose ancient light deceives

Me not, skating along the face of things,

For I know its weft, and find it delved deep

In the roots and bones of Earth. Thy reprieve

Falls sweet--Tarry here, counsel me to sing

Of old seeds of truths grasped, and pleasures reaped!

The lamp of Vesper hangs still, a pale urn

Watering our sleep with light and dewy dreams;

But the motion of all things is return--

Sink, and rise again. I trace thy gleam

Wandering, alighting waves far past my sight,

And sail thy wake on craft of human thought.

Stars do not shine that men may calibrate

Their instruments--float on! But my delight

Shall be to wash on Grecian shores, where taught

A sage long past whose simple truths abate

All Earthly fears.

That man, a Greek, fallen

Into mortal memory--to stardust

And starlight, scattering in the swollen

Void those atoms that were the scene of lusts

And terrors long conquered--Searching out the

Grounds of wise choice and avoidance, he lived

In this world a match for all the gods

In happiness. His voice echoes to me

Across the centuries; he has contrived

A path of wisdom, pleasant still to trod--

A path incorruptible, laid forever.

Just a bit of silly rhyming fun at the expense of the dour lechers who've slandered Leontium through the ages.

To Boccaccio: A Rebuke

I mark it, sir, and wonder at it dully,

To find the lady's name maligned so fully

On evidence begot anecdotálly;

A pond'rous load to hang by such a pulley!

Was our Leontium so fierce a bully,

Who sent him off peripateticálly

Pouting, old Theophrastus; when her volley

Charmed a grudging kindness out of Tully?

And have you, sir, the gall to say she sullied?

Who scattered bastards all across Itály!

I mentioned Horace's epistle to Numicia in another thread. I wrote this poem as an Epicurean response to his question.

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Firewood

While walking in the woods, I am at pains

To pause at each cold circle of burnt stone.

A totemic blending of the profane

And sacred: a human altar where none

So human live—where memory and time

Are sacrificed in their concentric rings,

The ageless for the transitory. Each

Ring is a dolmen, or a stele of lime,

And tells of the past in a varied speech.

It gives me pause, this strange chaleur vitale¹.

I think on sacred groves—such that deterred

Thoreau², and Horace, with that old Ital-

ic saw: Do you think Virtue naught but words,

A forest only firewood? For though

The greater mass goes up in flame, pile

Upon pile of charcoal lying near

Sighs at this loss; of what, I do not know—

But that it pleases me to wander here.

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¹French, Vital Heat

²Walden; "I would that our farmers when they cut down a forest felt some of that awe which the old Romans did when they came to thin, or let in the light to, a consecrated grove (lucum conlucare), that is, would believe that it is sacred to some god."

And...I think that's all! I'm happy to see signs of maturation as I read through them. I only recently read Horace's Ars Poetica for the first time and I'm trying to take some of his hints. Back to the blank page.

Note; I shared this poem with Elayne on her blog, and felt it proper to get her feedback before I posted it here. It is an elegy for her father, disguised within an ode to Archimedes.

_________________________________________

The Physicist

The waters of the Tuska-loosa run

Down south into the Gulf of Mexico,

And carry the quiet griefs and the tears

Of multitudes to the sea—to mingle

Here with waters wept in forgotten times.

I think of one such now—of Syracuse

On old Sicilian shores, and of her son

Archimedes, in whose mathematical

Problems and proofs were laid the foundations

Of what has come to pass. The farmers of

Pickens County still use his clever screw:

Physicists at the University

Still prove his theorems; yet when Cicero

Was quaestor in Lilybaeum, his grave

Was already forgotten, and his life

Thought a mere legend by his townspeople.

Tully found those lost bones. He needn't have—

They are again lost to unending time.

The life of the scholar was in his work;

Take up the chalk and blackboard, or the graph

Paper and the mechanical pencil,

If you wish to find Archimedes. Or

Stand rather here, on these darkling ageless

Shores, or else out in the Alabama

Woods, in a pine clearing covered by night

And find his name written across the stars.

-Joshua
__________

"You who measured the sea, the earth, and the numberless sands,

You, Archytas, are now confined in a small mound of dirt

Near the Matine shore, and what good does it do you that you

Attempted the mansions of the skies and that you traversed

The round celestial vault — you with a soul born to die?" —Horace, Odes I.28; transl. Peter Saint-Andre

Thank you! I am happy to have reconnected you with a memory, Elayne. I remembered Pickens County from your Dido poem.

I'm taking a break from reading epigrams, and have decided to try my hand at writing one.

No. 1

On a cold marble statue of Epicurus

I see you there, old friend, looking as stony as a Stoic. This is "absence of pain", to be sure; yet where is the pleasure in it? My heart beats hot blood.

Quote

This seemed an appropriate place to post this

And I thank you for it! What a great find.