Of the 10th Antigone Competition!
After a summer that yawned wide but kept us ever active, we’re at last back in the saddle. And there’s no happier way to start the new season of Antigone articles than to celebrate the wondrous talents of our readers.
For our 10th competition, we challenged you to write a poem that channelled, directly or indirectly, your enthusiasm for studying the worlds of the Greeks and Romans. Other than a mild steer about length, and a firm steer about form, you were free to compose as you liked. And, by Jove and Jingo, how you did! Over 200 entries from all around the world covered almost every subject under the sun, and with all manner of rhythm and rhyme to boot. (A crop weren’t in any recognisable verse form to our world-weary eyes, but we very much enjoyed your palpable enthusiasm nevertheless: thank you!)
The six judges met in a mutually agreeable location, halfway up the steep southern slope of Bárðarbunga: while there were some mumblings about the burning basalt, and some grumblings about limbs lost to the occasional interruption of lava, the surviving members of the panel agreed that, as stratovolcanoes go, this definitely earned a place in the Would Definitely Come Back category.
Well, we thought about a quarter of the entries were excellent, and the top ten per cent truly brilliant. It was exceptionally hard to choose just half a dozen Winners proper (three for each of our two age categories), but after much umming, ahhing and general blah-blahing, we eventually managed to craft a pair of podia.
So, here are our prizewinners, taking away among themselves a good healthy splash of cash and some lovely old books! Vel gert, gaurar!
Adult Category
First Prize (£300)
Three Riffs On Propertius
Cynthia Confronts Propertius
Unwelcome, she returns, reeking of ash.
Her eyes are molten; bolts of hair are waving
in wind he cannot feel. Her tirades thrash
wildly between lucidity and raving.
She is intent on settling the score:
her funeral was cheap and no one wept;
he promptly took up with a low-class whore
who dumped her baubles; not one thing was kept.
She spits demands: support her ancient nurse
in decent style and build a better grave
adorned with ivy! Free her faithful slave!
He starts to crumble. Sorrow stirs a wave
of shame until she snaps, “and burn your verse!”—
the one concession she cannot coerce.
Cynthia Defeated
She pleads for mercy she cannot coerce
while fading in the hints of morning light.
Her lover’s dream is starting to disperse,
yet he displays no wish to reunite.
Still arguing, she vanishes. He wakes,
unnerved, and sends a boy for figs and wine.
Unwillingly, her thinning spirit snakes
through smoke as soul and shadow intertwine.
Although she kissed the Lethe’s waters once,
she faked a sip with flawless self-control,
since cleansing memory of his affronts
would tear apart the fabric of her soul.
She spurns amnesia as a vain deceit,
and vows to torture him when next they meet.
Cynthia Triumphant
She vowed to torture him; he fears they’ll meet
in Hades. While his wife and children keep
their somber watch, he reels at blasts of heat
and hears low horns that whisper he should sleep,
but he exhausts himself to stay awake
and prays that she is only ash and bone.
He cries out as the shadows start to take
on form, and he begins to twitch and moan.
Cynthia revels in her numbness ending;
she feels ablaze once more. Small snatches of
cold-blooded tributes hiss like snakes defending
their dens. She feels their future, but no love.
She swears she will not let him disavow
his promise; no slick line can save him now.
A.M. Juster, Belmont, MA, USA
Second Prize (£150)
Countryman
Pausanias at Marathon
During the battle, in the thick of it,
a trooper of our regiment
suddenly lost the sight of both eyes.
Not touched by any weapon,
from that moment he was blind.
He used to say (I knew his father),
that he fancied he was facing
a man in heavy armour –
a man so tall that the shadow
of his chin darkened his shield.
The phantom passed one soldier by:
the man at his side he killed.
Now we have returned to raise
our monuments and plant our store
yet still in the sweaty night we hear
the horses whinny and the noise of war.
(None who schemes to know this vision
ever thrives, but the pleasances
show no wrath to those who, unaware,
happen on such presences.)
Some say too that in the field that day
they saw a man of rustic gist
and dress, who seemed to rise
out of the earth, into the mist.
Wielding his wooden plough, he set
about the enemy, and slew many.
As suddenly he vanished,
into the earth, exactly,
they say, at the green spot
where the burial mound stands. Now,
he returns in season to struggle
and work with us, he of the plough.
Tony Voss, Zetland, NSW, Australia
Third Prize (five antiquarian Classics books)
Ancients and Moderns
I.
Awake through the night, belated, distraught,
I longed for ancient giants—for the best
Which had been thought and said. What I sought
Lacks light, it seems. The last ancient confessed,
Now the path darkens through glass. Pagan thought
Is little more than devil dreams. Find rest
As the last Troy burns; gloried heroes fade.
The meek inherit the earth their God made.
II.
The lost millennium begins, obscured
By just an eon in the East. We find
Our constant in Christ. Romans, be assured
We have reached the secret. The divine mind
is one, not many; God is more matured
than newborn Saturn; you exalt mankind
And forfeit the heavenly city.
How Stoic. There is no vice in pity.
III.
I had long hoped for an eternal name:
The one that breaks the branching soul like thunder.
Borne above the self-same stars; grasping fame
Beyond Time’s Hunger. Let us wonder
How these authorities defy Lethe’s claim
But are always compelled to dwell under.
By grace we know man is no measure of
things. We are wise at the pleasure of
IV.
God, the artist. Let his divine nature
Perfect our imitations. Have we strayed
Far from the source, the originator
Of beneficence and truth? Every maid
And marble taken by usurpature
Would have, like those false idols, decayed
By Time’s ravages: the power, the glory
Of still another ancient story.
V.
I slept like the dead, but could not find them.
Days of lucid dreamlessness stalled my sleep.
And then just before the coveted REM,
Apparitions emerged from dream-work’s deep:
He rustled through my books, began to condemn
My rented Aeneid—he even weeped,
And his hands faltered. He could not render
What he meant. The ivory held its splendor.
VI.
Descartes, discarnate, wakes me in a fright.
“Has he left?” “Who?” I ask. “Virgil of course,
I saw him leaving, I think, though I might
Have cause to doubt. These words he left, though coarse
Like sand and mud’s debris, here Reason’s light
Will sift, restoring by method’s discourse
Foundations to be saved, though disputed.
That which still remains can be uprooted.”
VII.
They said shades loathe the light, but when was it
Brighter? Reason and logic and science
Abound like saving grace. Now we posit
What the old philosophers and giants
Dimly knew. No Byzantines can cause it
To belong again to holy silence.
Tradition, perhaps, was copper and glass;
We now discern gold’s glitter from mere brass.
VIII.
Some read books to quiet a restless mind.
Here an encyclopedia will do:
At the start, an editor’s note I find
Catches my eye: He champions the new
Thought, and rebirth of an infant mankind
And, by God, bids old scholastics adieu.
Lord, forgive your servant Urban (no, the eighth):
Doubt is integral to a life of faith.
IX.
When men’s opinions ceased to be the Word,
Mnemosyne, fertile still, shook off her dust
To rouse her sleeping children. They stirred
And inspired men to polish rust
Off the old antiques, to find there averred
Fragments, shored together, Greek or Arab.
They saw further on the wings of cherubs.
X.
I lingered here, in this liminal rest,
Not quite sleeping, not quite awake. I thought
I should follow Virgil—no, Descartes, lest
I wake up in the now times, to be caught
Here, living without the sacred, the blessed,
And belief; where truth amounts to naught;
History never ends. Light brought from dark
There in the beginning. The arche’s arc.
Mana Afsari, Washington, DC, USA
18-&-Under Category
First Prize (£200)
Ode to Classics
Remind me, please, O Magister
Explain to me once more
The sudden lack of posterage
Hanging from your door.
To me it doesn’t seem quite right
For classroom and abode
To cease to have its glories sung
On account of fire code.
Now creak upon your hinge, O Door
Allow me to describe
The covert wonders you conceal
The ancient walls inside.
Plastered to the pale brick
Familiar placards reign
Declaring sayings ever apt
Affirming their domain.
Here, we’re told to hurry slowly
There, to seize the day
Here, we read as Ovid’s Daedalus
Uttered ‘seize the way’.
Above the window to the left
Achilles’ rage is sung
Among the other famous lines
That praise the ancient tongue.
Gaze upon the bookshelf now,
Supporting weighty verse
Both Stoic works and those that trust
Lucretius’ universe,
Pindarian odes, philology,
Aristophanes
Red-spined books entwined with Plutarch
Hug Euripides.
Above, a wide-eyed Alexander
Locked in tesserae
Stares on as frescoed Clytemnestra
Hides her face to cry.
Across the room on timeworn rollers
Is a map of Trajan’s Rome
We swarmed around like Virgil’s bees
To take its nectar home.
Glancing over, see the whiteboard
Laced with epigrams
Beneath, that poster ‘bout Catullus
No one understands.
Perhaps you wonder why I feel
For this room like no other.
I don’t know, although I’ve tried
But I feel it and I wonder.
Now take this poster, please, I beg
And add it to the view
So all who search these walls may know
That I have loved it too.
Fulvia Minor, Milwaukee, WI, USA
Second Prize (£100)
Great Mother Cybele
(a poem in the Galliambic metre)
Oh great mother, blessings softly
all surround your priests, which bathe
in their flowing cruor, eardrums
pound, hurt with songs in your name.
I yearn blindly, seeking flashlight
revelations like theirs every
night, oh goddess, evening weeps, cherry
red desire in which you swathe
me, may worship fondle woodwork
of your greatness, for years the same
as when wailings uttered “Troy burnt”
but your worship still sparked revelry.
Alice Saba, Pavia, Italy
Third prize (five antiquarian Classics books)
Untitled
Long ago, in the days of old
When men were brave, so I’ve been told
There was in the hot south a land
That was both fair and proud and grand.
The name of that land was Greece
More to the west than the east
Well-learned in all its city states
Full of wisdom to the gates.
Though they were great, they lacked one thing
They did not believe in Christ our King:
They were pagans through and through
They worshiped gods and goddesses too.
Though loudly did their muses sing
They must end like everything
And where they built their palaces grand
Is nothing left but dust and sand.
Mary Dolezal (aged 11), Springfield, NE, USA
Very many congratulations to all! If you are keen for more, come enjoy this garland of the thirty-or-so poems we adjudged to be best of the rest. And thank you so much to all of you who took the time to write, and let the Muse take over your minds. We do hope that you enjoyed producing these poems even half as much as we enjoyed reading them. Talium floreat amor!