After Callimachus by Stephanie Burt

Author:Stephanie Burt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2020-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Artemis herself is harder to scare.

When you were a toddler, my goddess,

Leto came here with you, and handed you

to Hephaestus, so he would promise a dowry,

yours when you should wed.

She held out your body to him, but you heard his promise,

including the word that means wedding, and ripped out his hair.

That’s why the god of the bellows, to this day

has a receding hairline,

with a smooth spot up top.

It’s also why the din his employees

raise struck you, this time, as NBD.

“Cyclopes,” you said, “I’ll need a recurve bow,

and arrows, and hoops for a quiver.

You made them for Apollo; make them for me!

In return: when I track and kill

a meaty monster, an enormous beast—

and you know I will—you get the flanks,

the thighs, or the top sirloin—your choice—to eat.”

Of course they did exactly as you asked.

Faster than any human being could

you slung that bow over your shoulder, and that quiver

over your back, and ran to Arcadia

to fetch puppies (yes, of course you get puppies)

from wild Pan. You found him ripping slices

of raw meat from a dead lynx

to feed them full. And after the puppies had supper

he gave them to you: two half black and half white,

like cookies, called Sobel and Sabel; three more,

each ruddy and eager, and one

with almond patches and alert black ears,

whose fur, on a cat, you might call calico.

They were the kind of pups who could drag lions

by the skin,

living lions, I mean. And he gave you seven

adult dogs, each one able to breed and give birth—

our word “cynosure” comes from them,

meaning the best dogs, the ones who can catch anything.

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