A Bucolic Epode Of Aristaeus Poem by Steve Trimmer

Flote after flote (of Poseidon’s nefarious tridents)
Clash upon the shores of my Mother’s land (The Huntress)
Flouncing waywardly (this tide of wroth)
These waves of contention
My mind’s own eye ambulates in countermand
Back, back, back
To my beginnings

Pindar recollects but a late version (his tale a pasquinade at best)
Of my genesis, an’ those they call The Cyreneans
Marry, ‘twere my mother Cyrene they fettered
An’ retinues of Battus (of whom which Pindar extols)
They led a colony unto Libya’s shores
Naming the port-city for mine own Mother
An, the port itself for mine own ostensible father
Port of Apollonia (neath mislaid solar-grins)
Colony from whence Thera, came they
An’ claim lineage by me, Aristaeus; in 691 B.C.
Thus Battus is hailed as first king in Cyrene’s dynasty………

……..dry thine eyes precious Mother, I shall deliver thee from their prison tower…………………I swear it to be so

I was not always this love-child (forced unto Apollo’s reign)
So written in by the sycophant-scribes it the court of King Battus
Those who dare write rhetoric
As though it were rhapsody
Those who would contrive baleful quatrains
Coupled with disingenuous metre
Written with quills plucked so irreverently from a trepidatious caged ibis
Dipped in ink they hent from a harried cuttlefish
(At Cape Sepias the throes felt they………..poor Daughters of Tethys)
No, once I wert not besmirched so heinously
Un-thwarted by the contrivances of such o’erween minions
Who so befouled my name with pernicious lies

Long ere the breaching by Pindar’s words
Magnesia wast verily lovelorn with my Mother…………Cyrene
Cyrene led The Centaurs in these dauntless epochs
The trident of Poseidon had not yet stabbed our unsullied shores
My dearest Mother was the omniscient Muse Queen of The Centaurs
The Equine Goddess of Magnesia (the beauteous mare)
We of Magnesia were enamoured by the beat of Her thundering hooves
Bringeth truth to Thessaly, She surely did
Her Naiads sang upon our beaches
Tides of prettily clad virtues washed ashore
Cyrene loved Ares in these times;
For he had not yet sensed his penchant for war
He had penchants only for love and quietude
Ares lyre had yet to be indentured for ‘s spear (blessed be Dione)

As I recline here now
Neath this tree of myrtle;
I recall still, the ambrosial melodies of the Myrtle Nymphs (such solace abounds)
They, the singers to me, in mine own crib
Nary a care had I then; my heart yet not heavy
Well-a-day! …………..Those times be now gone
For those souls of our consanguinity
Took the Myrtle-boughs
To colony of Thera; while-ere methinks
En route to Apollonia (Lady Libya bound now in ’s gyves)

Hesiod the folly claims me a ‘pastoral Apollo’
As of late
Oh! How I do abhor such titular claims;
A cult-title of Cean Zeus (it can be not so)
As Ceos Isle burns neath the Dog Star?
Or Arcadian Zeus? (ne’er can it be)
Forgive me Hera (for I be not such a hector upon thy lands)
Drown me in a Fosse if it be so!

Yet, there are a few who claim me as a child of Hermes-Thoth
This………….yes this, remembers I
In Boeotia I answered to the name Ram-Bearer;
In age of The Ram (ah! I hear it………The Mill churns!)
Tis ‘r fish………swimming sagaciously in the pool of Sophia
I was he; son of Metis………..Mercurial Child
He who floats in Her waves of profundity
What gifts She doth beteem ‘pon me!

………At such apace, fee grief besets my conscience;

For once I was Finn Mac Cool in Hyperborean Eire (salmon flesh didst I eat)
‘Twere I, Thoth, who loved Ma’at at Hermopolis (in creation, city of 8)
Forsooth, ’twere I, upon Ceos Isle; they propitiated me in Dog Days unfair
At Cyrene City the sheep begird me
As do those fish from the Cyrenic Sea (waters of my Mother dear)
The Ram I carry…..(What of Ares? ………his lyre torn asunder)
I serve ‘r Lady; The Greater Sun of Sirius realm
Copious truth be innate in Dog Days fair; Thoth recalls it (Thoth so reclaims it for Her)

Virgil, in later ages, will write georgics;
Attesting to my days as skep-keeper of divine bees
Yet, it skills not to he
Of where or what or whom my bees were bred of;
From carcasses of cattle?
Nary be it so; My bees, they cometh not of cattle
For they didst swarm an’ rattle…but….
From whence the Lion’s life………….undone in battle

My Mother, dear Cyrene the fair
So grants him death-in-life
He is the Sacred King….. She snares
Who feels the Bee Muse, thrust ’r knife

Cyrene, Lioness…Sun Goddess
Oblates Her harvest Lion King
Sun rising in Leo star of August
It is time to feel Her sting

For ‘tis I, Aristaeus, who keeps the bees
Kept in trust for my Mother……Cyrene;

Oh! Cyrene
Goddess of The Bees
Lady Lioness
Great Naiad Nymph Queen
Voluptuous Mare of Wisdom
An’ Lady of the Sea

As Her valiant wheel turns
The Lion King lay down
The Great Pan dost return
As the Dog Star ambles round

The Keeper of The Bees
Is keeper of the truth
Mercurial Child so sees
The Cycle; from branch to root………….lion to goat to serpent (an annual journey done)

I am the child who serves Her
I am Thoth of Lady Ma’at (Dog Days seer on Nile of Solar Isis)
I am Hermes, messenger of Metis (curse the Olympians)
I am Finn Mac Cool in the Salmon Pool;
At the Hazel Tree ‘tis where I see
With the Cretan Craft, olives I graft
(Sweet whispers of the Oleaster Grove)

I eat from Pomegranate Trees of Nemesis
I stand in Hera’s own Garden of Hesperides

Rhiannon sustains me, of Apples in Avalon Orchards (Tir na Nog…land of the young)
(as Branwen’s swims cyclically o’er The Island waters…Her footprints still adorn the sand)
As does Eve…………………. in Eden’s Garden

Sweet figs from The Serpent; Red an’ Black, Back an’ Red
Truth of the Red Planets
Black from Eurynome’s primordial void

Alack! The hearts of The Centaurs discandy as I speak;
They may disbranch the Fruit Trees of the erudite
They may put chase ‘gainst The Great Mare, pushing Her back to The Sea
(venery un-folds…….hearts now un-done I say)
They may purloin ‘r Ladyship’s honey-sweet hives
…………..but Her truth lives on, Her universe lives on (look only to the macrocosm my children) , and by’r blood……………aye………...Her children live on

………………..repent fellow Centaurs………….do repent I beg

For I am Aristaeus……..betrayed by his own people; The Centaurs
Forsaken, an’ given o’er to Poseidon
Along with my Mother, dear Cyrene
Hither and thither, the ire-minded sea-god swims to the war march
He, who leads us down many a road in shackles
His tractable scribes re-write an’ expurgate our epics

Yet, we despair not, lest we forget this………….
There is only one tale
There is only one road………….which leads to the varied natured paths of The Source

My friends, my sisters, my brothers
Go to where the road ends
Seek the paths amidst The Trees
This be where truth doth abound

Melancholy betook my heart
As the Age of Pisces dawned
Until The Fates came in form unto me

In subtle tones, to me spake they;

“ Hearken thy Mother child
Hearken thy Mother child
Hearken thy Mother child”

In distant memory I soon can hear words uttered in modernity’s tongues, Cyrene doth quo’;

“ Remember my son, ‘tis we of energy Mercurial
We fly far enough from our Sun, Theia, not to be scorched
Yet close enough to harness Her power
We fly in close enough to Venus, Tethys, not to be clouded in emotion
Yet close enough to harness Her love
Earth is next in line my son
An’ with powerful light of The Sun behind us
An’ comely love of Venus in the front of us
We will fly forward……………
…………….and thus change the world
An’ Mars, Dione, will hold up Her shield to reflect all the lost Love and Light back to Earth;

………..Red to Red
Black to Black
Blood to Blood
Will bring Love back”

Humble bee my bumble bees
I am Aristaeus………………………..Son of Cyrene




Steve Trimmer