Wherefrom
Isthmian 1
By Pindar.
(This is an original translation of Pindar’s Isthmian I, part of ongoing work on Plato’s Phaedrus. It was undertaken with that dialogue in mind, specifically on the topos of leisure. The full Greek text was accessed here. Public domain translations may be found here, here, and here.
The original has an irregular line and meter. I prioritized keeping the “literal” meanings intact, with the goal of preserving the analogical work of the poem.)
FOR HERODOTOS OF THEBES, CHARIOT.
My mother, Thebes of the golden shield,
I shall place your matter above non-leisure.
May rugged Delos, to whom I have myself
Supplied, not take offense: What’s more beloved
By good men than their parents, esteemed?
Yield,
Apollo’s land: That, by the gods, dancing
For Phoibos of the unshorn hair, in flow-
Encircled Keos with her salt-born men,
And for the wave-splitting ridge of Isthmos:
Both graces I shall yoke to this one end.
Six garlands from her games did Isthmos send,
With Kadmos' team, and fame for glorious
Victory, to my fathers’ land. It was there
Alkmene bore her fearless son, before
Whom bristled once the bold hounds of Geruon.
But, making for Herodotos a gift
For his four-horsed chariot, its reins
Held not by another’s hands, to the hymn
I would fit him, either of Kastor or
Iolaos. For the mightiest among
Heroes of charioteers were born
To Lakedaimon and Thebes: and at
The games, of contests, they always sought out
The greatest count, and with tripods they filled
Their houses, and caldrons, and gold vessels,
Tasting the wreaths of victory:
And their
Manifest excellence boldly radiated
In races run nude, or wearing forged armor
And clattering shields, likewise when hurling with
Taut hands the javelin or pointed spear,
And whenever they threw the quoit of stone.
(For in that time, there being no pentathlon,
Each deed was given a separate end.) Often,
Their rippling hair bound round by wreathed bundles,
They would appear beside the ever-flowing
River Dirke, or on the banks of Eurotas,
The mighty son of Iphikles, being
One people with the Spartan race, and he of
Tundareas, presiding with Achaians
In their highland seat of Therapne.
Rejoice.
But I, attending to Poseidon with song,
The sacred Isthmos and the banks of the
Onchestos, will sing in honor of this man,
The famous dispensation of his father,
Asopodoros, and of Orchomenos,
His ancestral land, which received him when,
In desolate misfortune, he was driven
Ashore, shipwrecked, disposed by briny sea
Unmeasured:
But these days, the good old times
Hath native destiny restored.
Hard work
Brings foresight to the mind: And if he submits
Every impulse to excellence, both in
Expenditures and labors, then for him
Who obtains clamorous praise for valor,
One must bear no grudging thoughts.
It is an easy gift for a wise man
To speak a beautiful word, against
A multitude of hardships, and set straight
The common good.
Different wages for different works
Are sweet to men, to the shepherd, the farmer,
The bird-catcher, the one raised by the sea:
Each and every one struggles to keep hunger
Perpetual from the belly. But who takes
Splendid glory in contests, the making
Of war, receives praise as their highest gain,
In citizens' and strangers' finest tongues.
For us, it will be seemly, by making,
To celebrate son of Kronos, earth-shaking,
Mere bystanders of horse races into
Benefactors of gleaming chariots,
And to invoke your sons, Amphituon,
From deepmost hollow of the Minyan,
The famous grove of Demeter, Eleusis
And Euboia, at these curving courses.
For Protesilaos, I also include
The sacred precinct of Achaian men,
In Phulake.
To tell all that Hermes,
Lord of games, would bestow, by horses, upon
Herodotus, the brief measure of the hymn
Prevents. And very often, to be silent
Garners greater cheer.
So may he be raised up
On splendid wings of Pieridean Muses'
Sweet voices. Beyond that, may all the choicest
Wreaths from Pythia, the Olympiads,
And from Alpheos fortify his hand:
Building honor for seven-gated Thebes.
But if anyone hoards hidden wealth within,
While marking others' trials in derision,
Their failure is to see: The soul, bereft
Of reputation, achieves its end—in Hades.
//
School Days in Athens
Φαῖδρος: ναί, παρ᾽ Ἐπικράτει, ἐν τῇδε τῇ πλησίον τοῦ Ὀλυμπίου οἰκίᾳ τῇ Μορυχίᾳ.
Phaedrus: Yes, at Epicrates', in the house of Morychos, here, near the Olympiad.
//
Take words to it,
he said, and words were fire. And yet, you lacked
conviction. Crowded by black memories
of unseen hands and uninvited touch,
as old men’s trembling clammy kindnesses,
their groping behind doors, our voices as
stray syllables, or whimpering with fright,
the muffled passage of another, coaxed
with promises, down enforced aisles, bound by
vocabulary’s sight. Terrible child,
no light escaped the house of Morychos.
So how did you?
At nights, with flashlights,
we stayed up, mapping tangled vacations.
It wasn’t always hellish as it sounds.
We were kept kids, padlocked in battery
cages, our own best teachers, of tossed-off
certainties, known neighborhoods, and always
chasing some kind of slang. To spell the word
backwards, chop up and repurpose pieces,
or make the meaning opposite from what
it was. We traded jabs of pleasure in
the mottled darkness of his maze, tongues of
soft flesh. We rearranged worlds to make our
places.
What would your mother give to you
of time? Faded photos, hand-me-down jeans,
a crayon-drawn map of paradise, you were
a metaphor too well-worn for what you
became, true as, it feels ugly to be
ugly and the resolution offers
no resolution, just this hissing in
my ears, this chaos. Lay down in the dog
bog. Keep trying. Keep gashing out the lines,
edit twisting serpents from the narrative,
and trace the tattered logic left behind,
monster observing monster, overwrought
and double-blind.
History is the final
solution for you, so go, dissolve your words
in time. Let their bleached remains fortify
the temple, your descendants living down
the stupid crime. That’s what
religion was, at home, submission to
the uncomprehended solidarity of
teenage desire, or something like, romance.
On echinacea lawns, she dons glitter
bodysuits, writes parochial poetry
on freedom. We were such creators, in
our nascent phases, molding plastic limbs
to tether our volcanic bases.
I do
not want to go, I beg, don’t take me back.
In wept oceans let me clear the bitter
savor from my eyes. Picnics in real
places, manicures on brand, she painted party
faces, praising God for such justice
as could be found and leveraged there, in
shared maps of iron laces, corset-bound,
hound-hunted hallways exhumed from ancient
flavors of local reason, a child’s small
hand ghostly waving from the window like
a metronome. She swallowed blood and sand
to earn their graces.
Take words to it, I said,
and words were airplanes, it was time, and she
was ready. She heard rumors on the wind
of its disintegration, climbed a hill,
and saw it for herself: the metaphor had died.
The whole, wide world was failing beauty, spread
beneath her like a poem in multitudes,
legs-open bride. And still, she cried. She longed
for absolute intelligence of who
he was, of home, of houses on the street
and what they hide, of where the figure’s corpse
was buried, and what appetites for youth were
still fed and worshipped there.
Take care of it,
he said, and words were memories, to which
she had no scholarly reply. No house,
nor street belonged to her, no shoes or gowns
to pack in chests, but ashes and fresh-breath
mints lost in linings, crumpled tissues, all
forgotten reasons why. Because you were
unseen, you could escape the conflagration?
Not so, although, not too far off. Because
she took my parchment seeded in her and
bad wisdom gained, as blasphemy of sight,
enlightened predation.
If words be fire,
then seek us in my gold and burning bower:
a clown is a bad child with adult power.
//
(About.)
To the alien, from another side. // Earth used to be the most beautiful place.
You could go running, under-leaf, through waist-deep tangled-grass jungle, wondering about snakes but not stopping because you had lost something in there, your heart breaking along fault lines in egg shells of worry and the impossibility of searching this dense pocket of hiding. The sharp limits of eyes. (It could start to rain and the drops, clear pinpoints and gashes on your naked arms, would feel body-temperature, not quite cool.) You would give birth to yourself, clambering out from staggered layers of green into a rice field, shifting pale to yellow, (footsteps uneven in cracking, caked mud, swaying in) needle-soft fibers cascading with grain. A sea of it. (It could start pouring, but the heavy, like wind-whipped-metal, grey holds.) Do you go left, right, forward into the field, or back to the jungle? (Ok, good choice. Turn to page 56.)
Words come from behind you, you don’t understand those, but fearful fluttering heartbeats, you do. From underneath places, trembling invisibles look back, lines of sight never meeting, from too many directions. You never held what happened, there. Life was snuffed out in missed-crossings, disappeared, or worse, waited past the faltering light, as if to be found again, hoping but knowing, skin and memory growing thin and colder, until heart stopped. It gave up, it was over, but then, you were found. A strange struggle, distracting but home again, having made plans that seem irrelevant, at this point. Washed a sink full of dishes. Sat on the floor, scratching stray sentences in dust. It would be dark, but not raining, and anyway, you would be under the solid wood floor of another world, with footsteps relying heavily on the grammar of your (earthy) answer.
Somebody who loved you might bring you food that was soft and crunchy and salty and sweet. And a lit stick of honeyed incense. Parts of you would fall back in right places. You could remove clothes, find yourself misshapen, and step into a hot shower under pitch-navy sky. Becoming twin bodies, ocean and sorrow in a breathy coccoon against deep space. I would work my fingers into your scalp, and medicinal smells of sudsy substances would rinse off in slippery streams to either side of your (kissed) face. Scrub around ears. You could be clean. (And the miracle of that.) You could put on clean clothes. You could slip between clean sheets underneath a comforter blanket that was the perfect thickness for this night’s chill, with just enough weight to let you feel, well, enough. Plus a cat, on your legs. Yes, cats were amazing. You could cover your eyes, and drift off, as a warm hand slipped softly into yours. Everything that was lost, would be home, would be dreamt or forgotten, singing or held, would be tucked under feathers, bed scattered with blossoms, and the waning crescent would disappear into the better side of night.
One felt gratitude, and mistook it for fear. That is how beautiful Earth was. We couldn’t contain the joy it put into us, so we turned it upside-down, into fear.
How Not to Break
Σωκράτης: καλῶς γάρ, ὦ ἑταῖρε, λέγει.
Socrates: Beautifully said, fellow.
//
People forget the absolute confusion it would throw us into. Our poor hearts. To be flirted with by Socrates!
Everyone reacted in his own way. There were puppies, pitbulls and poodles among us, Siamese cats, golden retrievers, kosher beef hotdogs, poisonous spiders and slithering snakes, all electrified, burning cheeks, clammy hands, contemptuous coughs, eyes rolling exaggeratedly behind backs, tea-drinking, name-calling, note-taking, knowing looks, mistaken engagements, pregnant pauses, drunken outbursts, drunken confessions, drunken makeouts, sneaking sweets into pursed lips, so many petty jealousies you wouldn’t believe.
Backstabbing, frontstabbing, it got ugly, abusive. Nobody wanted to see himself like that. Some went abstract, algebraic, symbolic, tried to ignore it, tied their hands as they slept. It exhausted us all. Some dismissed her for it, pretended cute compliments were sarcastic slights, secret glances a lie, the multi-entendres a meaningless flourish, intellectual metaphor, performative bullshit, while sneaking behind bushes. Some named it irony, her beloveds and her beautifully saids, a great number of grown men turned theatrically, cartoonishly evil, sending pornography to professional inboxes, these are historical facts, they just broke.
From her simple, sweet flirtation: they broke.
The question was always, how not to break.
(Hold it together?) What does he want. (Does he want it from me?) What do I want. (Why do I want it?) Do I want to give. (Do I have what he wants?) Do I believe him. (Is it about sex?) The stimulation of bodies to pleasure, more pleasure, until lost in the pleasure. (Reforged in pleasure?) Is it empty or is it full. (It or me?) Am I safe or am I in danger. (Which is the one that holds me together?)
The heart becomes a gaping question.
After all, this is a rite of passage. Few of us pass. (Pass into what?) The beautiful is what we call it when someone just does.
//