alcibiades

by Matthew Stokdyk

just last night he had dreamed
he was in my paint, my clothes;
now here in my arms, wounded,
my veil a winding sheet, made
up in my colors and his blood
as if ready to sit down to dinner.
the arrows reside in him yet,
plunged deep, achieving in day
what i could only find at night,
when quietly he would come
or i would, and he’d tell me
what socrates had taught him
ages ago, imperious and older.
sometimes he’d quote the verse
his old classmate wrote, how
his soul—wretched and trying
to be steadfast—would still
nearly cross over to his lover
when they embraced, their lips
a bridge, explaining, perhaps,
why he didn’t much like to kiss,
that i might take his soul that way.
i could only nod, understanding
there was, no more, a chance
to analyze the good or the bad,
alien to me and my formation,
late to having the courage
to love men (really, to hate men).
and, after, he would leave
fare on the nightstand, obols
i still carry in my mouth.
his blood had the same taste.


My soul, when I was kissing Agathon, I bore upon my lips;
it came—the wretched, steadfast thing—as if to take itself across.

— Greek Anthology 5.78, attributed (probably falsely) to Plato


…Alcibiades had the courtesan Timandra with him, and in his sleep he saw this vision: he thought he was wearing the courtesan’s clothes while she held his head in the crook of her arm and prepared his face like a woman, painting and outlining. […] All say that he had a vision not long before his death. […] They cast upon him javelins and arrows, and so he fell. […] Timandra took up his corpse and wrapped it and covered it in her clothes…

— Plutarch, Alcibiades 39