Eric Brown is Professor of English at the University of Maine Farmington and incoming Executive Director of the Maine Irish Heritage Center. His publications include the books Milton on Film and Insect Poetics as well as essays on Renaissance literature, film adaptation, and animal studies. His poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in The Ekphrastic Review, Carmina Magazine, and The Frogmore Papers (shortlisted for the 2023 Frogmore Poetry Prize).
I. Celtine (after Parthenius, Erotica Pathemata)
The red cattle of Geryon were luscious oxen,
Big-balled brutes with hides luminous as the sun
Setting on auburn leaves, or beds of burnished pine.
Hercules was happy to steer them, plundered
For Eurystheus, leaning his hulking strength
Into their thick ribs and stolid joints, their necks
Bulky and fit enough for the yoking of giants.
And unlike their herdsman, thin-skulled Eurytion,
They could take a cudgeling between the horns
Without dropping dead at his feet. Nor did Orthus
Prove stalwart as a guardian. After the marshes
Of Lerna, where the nine-headed Hydra erupted
With frenzied venom and rotting maws, immortal
But for burning, the two-headed runt of Echidna’s
Litter seemed scarcely more than a yapping pup.
His glaring eyes and xanthous fangs sufficed
To keep away wolves and thieves, but his growls
Were quickly silenced by the knotted club
That slew the Nemean cat. And the giant king,
Triple-bodied Geryones with blades and spears,
Churning the air with six arms like a typhoon,
Was similarly battered, left in the pasture
With appendages still twitching, a colossal
Locust squashed by some farmer’s spade. Hercules
Began to think his labors were getting easier.
But the cattle were not only strong as menhirs,
And would have out-shouldered for good grazing
That hollow horse with its bellyful of Achaeans,
Thrasymedes and boar-crested Diomedes,
Crafty Odysseus and war-weary Menelaus,
Eurypylus and Eumelus and the rest of the soft
Breathing Greeks. They were also numerous,
A lumbering drove that rolled like hillsides
Across Gadeira and the russet lands of Hiberus,
Myriad as velvet ants spilling from a nest.
Juno saw how to make things harder, and sent
Her gadfly, full of annoyance, whose stings
Dispersed them all across the farthest reaches
Of Hesperia. Undaunted Alcides crushed
That bug as well, then rifled every mountain
And dale for his wayward drift of burly kine.
It was in those first days of his ferreting, Celtine,
When Hercules was worked into a lather,
Frantic to find them, that he stumbled upon
Your father’s rich homestead. The bovine
Tracks, staunchly printed in the receiving earth,
Were no great challenge to follow, and led him
Straight to your dooryard. Already he heard
Deep lowing from the meads, mingling with your
Own heifers hallooing. Indeed you had seen those
Behemoths pass your window, snorting and ruddy,
On their mazy way to couple with new mates.
King Bretannus opened his gates to the man,
And at his entrance all breath left your body.
The beasts in the field were less blood-heated
Than you at the sight of this demigod robust,
Virile and wild. Here was no boyish farmhand,
Nor stooped herdsman trodding goat-wandered
Hillocks. Had Perseus himself been your daily
Paramour, or even were you showered with heroes
From every age, no man could have better stirred
Your pent-up longings. Built like a bull, he gorged
That night on racks of roast venison, draining
Half the dark wine in your family cellars,
While you ministered to him, letting barely your
Hand graze his as you fetched another tankard.
The house now full of slumbrous drunken snores,
You came to him by starlight, his lion-skin lying
Over his nakedness, his club an arm’s reach away.
You sat at the edge of his bed, touching his bare
Rounded shoulder to rouse him. And when he
Nuzzled awake, your fingers had already drifted
Down to the tightness of his stomach, feeling
The pulse of muscles hardened in combat arenas.
You confided you knew where his quarry roamed,
But were loathe to lose his company so soon.
Anxious as he was to tie them down, he was more
Taken by your beauty. Your gown diaphanous,
Delicate as a moon moth, matched the green
Of your eyes, nor was such light garb concealment
For your bursting charms. Alcmene’s son was not
Slow to raise himself from off his cot, and entwine
Firm limbs with yours, pulling you roughly against
His broad chest, filling you with prodigious girth
Until you lost count of your wordless shudders.
When the sun arose, casting a deep cardinal glow
Over your two spent figures, you grasped him again
By his massive hand and led him to a swath
Of crimson cows, udders ready for milking.
His stay with you was short. Recapturing the rest
Of those beasts, who covered much ground,
Took fully a year, and brought him to fertile lands
Far from you. He spent other nights with others,
While in your womb grew a scion of proud Jove.
And when the Scythian Dragoness, scaly tail
Constricting, offered him the same lusty bargain,
The whereabouts of his livestock for one long
Cold kiss, Hercules was no slower to accept.
In this way he recovered his scattered cattle.
Nine months from his parting, a doughty bairn
Was born, a stout prince with eyes viridescent,
Like you silver-tongued, dreamy and sanguine,
Like his sire resilient, with a wanderlust ferocious,
A vigorous coupling that birthed the line of Celts.
With the child came mystic visions: ice and fire,
Battlesmoke and druid’s oak, sacred groves, frothy
Seas, harps tuned to graying bardsong. You saw
Hard harvests and standing stones, emerald grasses
And drenching fog, broad antlered elk and black,
Squelching bogs. Caesar would find these tribes
Untamed, woad-blue warriors fed on cream and flesh,
Their Hercynian forest full of mammoth bulls,
Ancient auroch, no shortage of descendants
Of Geryon’s herd abundant, nor Herculean might.
***
English translation of Parthenius by Gaselee (https://www.theoi.com/Text/Parthenius.html)
XXX. THE STORY OF CELTINE
Hercules, it is told, after he had taken the kine of Geryones from Erythea, was wandering through the country of the Celts and came to the house of Bretannus, who had a daughter called Celtine. Celtine fell in love with Hercules and hid away the kine, refusing to give them back to him unless he would first content her. Hercules was indeed very anxious to bring the kine safe home, but he was far more struck by the girl’s exceeding beauty, and consented to her wishes; and then, when the time had come round, a son called Celtus was born to them, from whom the Celtic race derived their name.
II. Anthills on the Palatine
That spot, Thalia, where we took repose
And warmed ourselves on the Palatine lawns,
Now is overrun with ants, red and dusty,
Who have built their own seven hills,
In imitation of our immortal founders.
Harried servants of Psyche, sorting grain
From grain, they cared not for my sandals
Pressing into the turf, and ignored as well
The distant crashing of cymbals, as some
Shrine in the vale burst forth in parade.
These pismires climbed the stalks of gladioli,
In that garden you thought incited me,
When my fingers found the slit beneath your stola,
And I murmured of a storm fast approaching.
Now myrmidons stream over the grounds,
And pinch each other in agitation,
Legs and heads and their pompous bottoms
Mingled as one. The Stagirite remarked
That ants never hunt, but take what they find.
Would that I had no need to press you so hard,
To uncross your legs again in the rain.
III. Neither Honey nor Bee (after a fragment of Sappho)
Neither honey of bee nor the bee for me,
Unless it be a winter hive, dozing and sessile.
Too many flowers, violets and hyacinths,
Have I reached for,
Only to find a sting beneath the petals.
Summer roses, anemone, and wild rue,
Some plucked by the soft light of a clouded moon,
Are dying pleasures.
The garlands of Venus cause a numbing buzz,
Solemn reminders that rosy dawn breaks daily
Her promise, passing into night, starless night,
Bruising blue and black.
How many soulmates have sweetly knelt with me?
And what virile arms embrace them now, what lies
That pass for truth do they whisper as they spill
Their cups of wine?
How many quaffs of Lethe must I swallow
To forget all the love tokens, kisses, and
Pledges? How often the lyre played for us songs
Tuned now for others.
I leave off this bludgeoning. Keep your nectars,
More bitter than wormwood or fatal aconite.
Better to live than to love, though life itself
Be a lonely strand.
The Galway Review 