A Bird Called Elaeus - Poems for Here and Now from The Greek Anthology
David Constantine, Bloodaxe books, £12

A Bird Called Elaeus is the socialist poet and translator David Constantine’s latest book. It follows his co-translation (with Tom Kuhn) of the Collected Poems of Bertholt Brecht.

In an exclusive interview with the Morning Star, he explains why he was inspired by this ancient Greek anthology.

What is the history of this collection?

An anthology is a garland of flowers. This one, deriving from earlier ones, survives in only one copy in the Palatine Library in Heidelberg. It is a very rich gathering together of around 4,500 poems by many poets. This is still only a small selection of the vast wealth of more than 1,500 years of ancient Greek poetry.  

“That night, all night, how busy we were/ I was learning to play his body and he mine./ So we gave and received till the rising of the morning star./ Grateful, we hang this lyre in Cypris’ shrine.” (Anon)

How do such ancient poems speak to us?

Many of their subjects are the essential facts and concerns of the human race back then and now. Love, childbirth, loss; making a living, the making of a happy and generous life; misfortunes; the failures; the interventions and ruin by war, greed, tyranny; the tending and love of the Earth herself; the abuse, greedy exploitation and spoiling of Her; the punishment for that. And much else.    

“Our soothsayers mumble nothing we don’t know./ The swallows are fewer and some arriving die./ Singles repair the homes of a year ago./ Piteous their hope. Our priests look no one in the eye./ All see the signs and none know what they mean./ It is Persephone’s advent but we hear of meadows/ That are not fit to be seen by the sun or moon./ Zephyrus falters, the slant hail blows./ We know it is time to weigh anchor again/ Loose the hawsers, open the sails. But look there:/ Another eyeless dolphin has washed in./ Can it be that everywhere is much like here?” (Anon)

What about these poems attracted you?

Their variety, wit, conciseness, truthfulness (about the human condition, the good, the stupidity, the evil, the resilience). Their often very exact relevance to the way we live now. 

“In the manoeuvring for where best to stand and fight/ Alexander abandoned Issus and his sick and wounded there./ Darius, entering without opposition, cut off their hand./ Come spring and the melt, will our streams run cold and clear?”

The great majority speak of sadness — even if at the same time with dark humour.

I’m not sure it’s the majority, but many, yes, do deal with the fact that human beings, like every other form of life, die. Women in childbirth, men drowning at sea or in war, men, women and children liable to illnesses, earthquakes … Much as now. For myself I find in them a great love of life, living against the fact of death. I’m glad you found some of them funny — I certainly did.

“Alive this Manes was a slave but is/ Dead as powerful as great Darius.” (Anyte of Tegea)

You say that Brecht was drawn to these poems. Why?

He admired their conciseness, their close attention to the realities of life on Earth, the material exactness, “so-ness,” how things really are. They sharpened his ability to attend very closely to things, people, ways of thinking, deeds. On a beam over his desk in exile in Denmark he had (quoting Lenin, Hegel, Augustine) in big capital letters: DIE WAHRHEIT IST KONKRET/ TRUTH IS CONCRETE. He saw that in the poems of the Greek Anthology.

“Cold East wind and the breakers have flung ashore/ On Lesbos rich in wine, up under her sheer/ Cliffs a naked man. Between the unmoving stone/ And the moving waters he will soon break down.” (Perses)

You felt compelled to respond to your selection with compositions of your own. Why?

Because after spending a great deal of time with them, I thought I could and I should. I thought it would be an oblique way of speaking about the here and now, the good and the very bad in it. Quite often I made alterations, some small, some large, to the Greek originals in my English.

“Fact/ The fact is, friend, we matter more than you./ One husband, lover, son, father of ours/ Outweighs at least a hundred such of yours./ It’s a fact of life, my friend — and of death too.” (David Constantine).