Rhododactylos

[serge gurkski]

There’s a bit of rosy blood

in the first morning hour of the boulevard,

dashed with pencils red and blue,

but the colors are rehearsing still.*


Rosy-fingered dawn, Ῥοδοδάκτυλος Ἠώς

kisses him softly awake

to a world he finds hard to love

at first sight, at least.


He needs a warm coat of booze or smack

or best of all: both

to make it again out on the streets

cackling with arrogant disgust.


He can quote Homer to himself
(Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος
οὐλομένην, ... )

but that does not buy him

a bowl of soup nor cigarettes

nor a friendly bottle of Rum.


He must refill his tank

of senseless but meaningful

hope again.

He grabs the glass filled

to the brim with a musical Jinn

and consoles himself by

listening to Sappho's praise

of Atthis, unique among

Lydian women.


The Lesbian queen of poetry

stole the rosy-fingered epithet

from Homer's dawn-young sun

only to give it to her blue love-thirsty

moon: σελάννα.

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* stole that stanza from another poem of mine: