Royal Rhodes | Poetry

POETRY

By Royal Rhodes

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The Montréal Review, May 2025

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AT HADRIAN'S ARCH

Gates of ivory
and horn
close and open,
as dreams leap
across the borders
of each night.

A face that seems
the holy face
bearing light
coming forth
from darkness
stares at me,
when the gods
take a body
subject to ruin.

On a road
of cobblestone
many faceless
strangers stroll,
and one,
unknown and mute,
darts an instant
glance
like Apollo
notching arrows
on his curved bow
to strike,
as I follow
beauty, traceless,
cold, unending
passion.

This pensive Caesar,
a limitless commander,
who had built
protective walls
no longer standing
knew this feeling --
life is only
flying off,
alone to that
alone.

AGORA

A small shop in the Plaka,
tucked away from tourists,
displayed in a back room
a painted cup for wine.
The tall figure in profile
wore a flat, broad-brimmed
hat for his long travel,
like the god of tradesmen
who directs the eye of desire.
This was the figure of one
I read in an extravagant
fantasy, in which the chorus
of myth -- satyrs and Furies --
mixed with the selling of items
in an obscure Arcadian town.
The shallow bowl of the cup
showed the figure lined in black,
without the huge, social upheaval
convulsing the time of its making.
I learned about those old battles,
refined by anonymous Alexandrian
editors, from papyrus fragments,
drawn by their eros of logic
to straighten the jumble of letters.
The shop-keeper grimaced and left.
The young assistant offered the cup
as I dropped coins into his hand
and looked in the eyes of the god.

OLYMPIC YOUTH

—after Pindar

This young land is prosperous,
the countryside divinely blessed.
Glorious voices of a men's chorus
are chanting appropriate praises
to those who live nearby for the boy,
greatest in the ultimate foot race.
The start and finish both dazzle
when a god guides a runner's legs,
filling Apollo's fast footprints
along the trail edging the farmlands.
Let fortune so track him in his future,
in the way spectators took no small
share of delight expectantly looking
at one as swift as the morning light.
A god's heart is free from agony,
but a young man's hurtling body
an old poet can only touch with song
wins the victory, excellence in speed,
and lives to hear words of undying art.
His feet may not tread on the low clouds,
but whatever splendor allowed mortals
he has reached, excelling the limits.
Apollo, golden friend, rejoices most
and laughs, seeing others' fumbling limbs
as loud chords and the cry of flutes sound.
No illness or crippling age has mixed
into this sacred race, no nemesis
or fear, only the stark outline of beauty.
Even envy, whose head of wild hair
shimmered like tangles of serpents,
will now dance to the triumph song,
leaping from stanza to stanza like a bee.
My hope is this victor will always outshine
boys his own age and all his elders,
as my lyrics lure the eyes of girls to him.
No one can forecast even the next year,
but knowing a friend in a friend is sure.
Such gold when tested by a touchstone
reveals its unchanging nature to us,
even as the four winds shift quickly.
You are crowned and --as I watched-- you smiled,
golden in the sun and naked to the air,
with a heat lightning body and thunder mind,
turning as sudden as a heartbeat into a god.

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Royal W.F. Rhodes is the Donald L. Rogan Professor of Religious Studies Emeritus at Kenyon College.