At the funeral games of Hephaistion the blessed,
Sandīpanī the naked sage from the East
delivered a eulogy that was downright Orphic.
Indeed, Mendikos the Olbian
found more than a passing similarity between their sects.
Both had long hair bound up,
both covered their faces with sacrificial ash
and walked in smoke hunting visions;
both carried charms, amulets, idols
and other sacred trinkets strung round their necks,
their skin was marked with mystic sigils,
and each had a book of holy hymns
from which they recited daily.
Such was not too surprising;
religious specialists were often alike the world over.
What caught the mantis’ attention
were the words Sandīpanī spoke
in his crude, clipped Greek.
Mendikos made out something about empyroses,
and nights of darkness, and dancing stars
emerging from eggs, and how the wheel turns
and it keeps happening again and again,
but a little different each time.
And how there are an infinite number of worlds,
and in some of them Alexander grows old with Hephaistion,
and in others they did not even meet,
or they fell in love with different people.
And so we must embrace whatever the Fates weave for us
since this is the only world in which things happen
just this way. And then, to make his point
he doused himself with oil and smashed a lamp upon his head
and before anyone could reach him
the naked sage Sandīpanī immolated,
like a phoenix ending one cycle and beginning another,
like Herakles the Lion-slayer,
like Empedokles.
