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Tag Archives: King Croesus

They Tried to Burn My King Today: Part III

16 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by elainestirling in Narrative poetry

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

#bringingbacktheglosa, Elaine Stirling, glosa, King Croesus, medieval Spanish fixed verse, narrative poetry, revisiting mythology

greek cave pool santorini

The first two parts may be read here and here.

Book Three

To be as rich as Croesus, or to live without
a care? These matching oars, once mastered
by our helmsmen, twin plowshares that rode easy
in a tiller’s hands, the world has split to either/or.
Your name, dear king—a mockery by tyrants
and vintners of the sour grape—I call
in secret, and you never fail to come. I do not ask
permission of the domed or steepled lot. I let them
plot and scratch. Your pillow talk I still recall:
break loose your trim ship’s hawsers, haul

the baggage of your past and toss it to the dolphins!
History is not, you loved to say, the purview of
the winners but the ones afraid of what comes next.
Your counsel to Great Cyrus could not penetrate
the circles of disdain and scorn that mottled
his fine spirit, though a few did understand.
Freed men and widows, wealthy now beyond imagining,
you’ll find them on no Senate floor or king’s list,
but they’re teaching younger generations well to hand
the anchor from its harbor nest, and stand

among the growing mass who knows there is no
victimhood, only the choice of each to limit or allow.
Your tolerance of wealth, my beloved Croesus,
knows no boundaries. Your opting to ascend
to legend frees us both. Today, I am no concubine.
Nameless as I ever was, you’ll find no grand
or mawkish monuments to one of thousands who
adored you, but I know what we achieved, and why
you set me on that boat, with Apollo’s helping hand,
up into the trade winds off the headland.

So, now I turn to you, dear reader, impatient
in your search for all that’s new. I see the scimitars
of doubt you try to hide; I hid them too, until I met
the richest king who’d ever lived and walked
broad streets absent of poverty, no crime,
and all deaths natural, in their time. The trails
we left are narrow, yes, but clean as an arrow’s arc.
If you would just give up concern; the king was never
burned! Your golden talent’s limitless. Forget travails,
your woven, patched, and thrice stitched sails.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

If you’ve been reading Oceantics for awhile, glosas will be nothing new to you. One of my goals is to restore this glorious Spanish medieval form to appreciative modern audiences. My novella of horror and good medicine, Dead Edit Redo, creeps into the darkest mysteries of the glosa. My compatriot of sorts, Alain C. Dexter, published a whole book of them called Dead to Rights. And while we’re on the topic of self promotion, please take a peek at my newest novel of mystery and magical realism, Daughters of Babylon.

Now I should like to give credit to two other poets, without whom this glosa could not have been written. Antipater of Sidon lived in Greece in the 2nd century. His poem, “The Bidding of the Harbor God”, forms the tenth line of every stanza and drives the glosa’s rhyme scheme. The masterful translation is by Sherod Santos, an American poet and author of Greek Lyric Poetry: A New Translation. I’ve included Antipater’s full poem here, Santos’s translation, so you, too, can appreciate the talent of both poets.

The Bidding of the Harbor God

Take your thwarts, oarsmen, it’s time to carve
new sea-lanes through the breasting swells.
Wild gales no longer avalanche the shoals
or harrow the rigging of a sail’s nerve,

and already out of mud and clay, swallows
build their jug-nests underneath your eaves.
So quickly now, before the gulled moon leaves
its slumberous lightweight in the meadows,

break loose your trim ship’s hawsers, haul
the anchor from its harbor nest, and stand
up into the trade winds off the headland
your woven, patched, and thrice stitched sails.

—Antipater of Sidon, circa 150 BCE
Translation by Sherod Santos, © 2005

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They Tried to Burn My King Today: Part II

16 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by elainestirling in Narrative poetry

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

#bringingbacktheglosa, Elaine Stirling, glosa, King Croesus, medieval Spanish fixed verse, mythology revisited, narrative poetry, poetry

gold coin

Part One can be read here.

Book Two

Apollo, source of flame and light, you responded
as you always do to rapture by accelerating
vortices, this time, from my brave king whose body
writhed upon his pyre and the bobble-headed foe
embroiled by injustices, taxations, denominators
low and common. From these ebbs and flows,
the god whose logic cringes from the brine of
lazy minds assigned a coolness to the fire,
shot killing sparks from kindling yarrows;
and already out of mud and clay, swallows

plunged at eyes and ears of executioners
as if upon a field of rye, while from the pyre
roars of carefree laughter poured. The commoners,
my king’s beloved, cried and pointed out, “Behold
our Majesty, he thrives!” The fire hissed and cooled
to blue; ‘twas even said, the golden, gathered sheaves
of harvest threw out seeds ten times their weight
and burnt the skin of the invaders. My sister concubines
set out in cheery droves to fill their skirts and sleeves,
build their jug-nests underneath your eaves.

Oh, my sweet king, how richly you display
unfailing prowess of abundance. Tales reached me
here in exile of the frantic reconsiderings of Cyrus
when he learned his greatest rival would not burn.
The officers not blinded disassembled cedar barely
scorched. They wrapped you in a poultice made of leaves
of laurel, and to Persia they dispatched you as high
counsel to the emperor. Our vaults of gold, I’m told,
have all been plundered. While the citizenry grieves,
so quickly now, before the gulled moon leaves,

I recreate ten times what you and I amassed in Lydia.
The means, I came to know by heart, thought, womb,
and though I’d rather have you by my side and
in my bed, I know your task of disempowering
the easily dispirited provides the ballast that
we need, so I consent to sleeping only with those
whose appetites o’erride the miserly and jealous.
Such men are rare but worth the ecstasy. The grid
of our economy refreshed now swiftly grows
its slumberous lightweight in the meadows.

to be concluded…

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

If you’ve been reading Oceantics for awhile, glosas will be nothing new to you. One of my goals is to restore this glorious Spanish medieval form to appreciative modern audiences. My novella of horror and good medicine, Dead Edit Redo, creeps into the darkest mysteries of the glosa. My compatriot of sorts, Alain C. Dexter, published a whole book of them called Dead to Rights. And while we’re on the topic of self promotion, please take a peek at my newest novel of mystery and magical realism, Daughters of Babylon.

Now I should like to give credit to two other poets, without whom this glosa could not have been written. Antipater of Sidon lived in Greece in the 2nd century. His poem, “The Bidding of the Harbor God”, forms the tenth line of every stanza and drives the glosa’s rhyme scheme. The beautiful translation of his poem is by Sherod Santos, an American poet and author of Greek Lyric Poetry: A New Translation. Thank you, both!

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