POETS UNITED - SILENCE

“Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.” - Jean-Jacques Rousseau 

For this week’s theme Poets United has set its Midweek Motif as “Silence”. My poem refers to two Hellenistic gods: Harpocrates and Hermes – in case your mythology is rusty, here is what they stood for. 

Harpocrates (Ancient Greek: Ἁρποκράτης) was the god of silence, secrets and confidentiality in the Hellenistic religion developed in Ptolemaic Alexandria (and also an embodiment of hope, according to Plutarch). Harpocrates was adapted by the Greeks from the Egyptian child god Horus. To the ancient Egyptians, Horus represented the newborn sun, rising each day at dawn. When the Greeks conquered Egypt under Alexander the Great, they transformed the Egyptian Horus into the Hellenistic god known as Harpocrates, a rendering from Egyptian Har-pa-khered or Heru-pa-khered (“Horus the Child”). 

Hermes (Greek: Ἑρμῆς) is an Olympian god in Greek religion and mythology, the son of Zeus and the Pleiad Maia, and the second youngest of the Olympian gods (Dionysus being the youngest). Hermes was the emissary and messenger of the gods. Hermes was also “the divine trickster” and “the god of boundaries and the transgression of boundaries, ... the patron of herdsmen, thieves, graves, and heralds.” He is described as moving freely between the worlds of the mortal and divine, and was the conductor of souls into the afterlife. He was also viewed as the protector and patron of roads and travellers.

During Classical and Hellenistic Greece he is usually depicted young and nude, with athleticism, as befits the god of speech and of the gymnastics. When represented as Logios (Greek: Λόγιος, speaker), his attitude is consistent with the attribute, his hands often in an eloquent gesture. 

Silence Befits Harpocrates

O, Horus Child; O, Sun of dawn,

Who by the shores of mighty Nile

You grow into virile manhood,

My forebears dubbed you Harpocrates,

For your Egyptian name was too rough

For their silvery, slippery tongues.

You stand and look at me smiling,

And unlike your children friends

You hold your tongue,

Though all you know, all you’ve seen;

And yet you talk not, you keep my secrets

Betrayer you are not, my loyal friend.

Harpocrates (I too, prefer this name of yours),

You weave fine wreaths of fragrant roses

And even if sharp thorn draws blood

From your pricked finger, you let it flow

And not a word escapes your lips,

No cry of pain, no sigh of fierce frustration.

I shall my lover call Harpocrates, after you,

For he too stays silent, (too silent for my liking),

And he too betrays no confidence,

(Even his own to me he will not give);

I tell all, confide in him and expect in return a flood of words,

But like you Harpocrates, all he does is smile – silently…

To Hermes Logios I shall sacrifice three nightingales,

And hope that he will give you more words than I need;

For while Harpocrates is a fine god for friends,

I’d rather model my lover after Hermes, whose eloquence

I want filling my voids with wise words, small talk, poetry,

Entreaties, vows, idle prattle, and even more vital,

Words of love, sweet talk of passion, nothings of fond affection…