I leapt the rocks.
173 Keep a quiet heart.
We move into battle.
Come down among us,
O Zeus!
The ground is our blood.
Long ships in the bay.
174 Their lives
Held in the arms
Of the waves.
175 Erxias, Defender, how can we muster
scattered troops? The campfires
Lift their smoke around the city.
The enemy’s sharp arrows grow
Like bristles on our ships. The dead
Parch in the sun. The charges are bolder,
Knifing deep into the Naxos lines.
We scythe them down like tall grass
But they hardly feel our attacks.
The people will believe that we accept
With indifference these locust men
Who stamp our parents’ fields to waste.
My heart must speak, for fear
And grief keep my neighbors silent.
Listen, hear me. Help comes from Thasos,
Too long held back by Toronaios;
And from Paros in the fast ships.
The captains are furious, and rage
To attack as soon as the auxiliaries
Are here. Smoke hangs over the city.
Send us men, Erxias. The auguries
Are good. I know you will come.
176 Truth is born
As lightning strikes.
177 Against the Wall, fists on hips,
They leaned in a fish-net of shadow.
178
179 Scallop.
180 Wood carved
To curve.
181
182 With Aphrodita
Audacity wilts.
183 Fox knows many,
Hedgehog one
Solid trick.
Aliter:
Fox mows
Eleventythree
Tricks and still
Gets caught;
Hedgehog mows
One but it
Always works.
184 In the hospitality of war
We left them their dead
As a gift to remember us by.
185
186 I hold out my hand
And beg.
187 I weep that the people of Thasos
Are in trouble;
The Magnesians
Are not my concern.
188
189 Teaches the law
Of Crete.
190 And may the dogdays
Blister the lot.
191 Kindly pass the cup down the deck
And keep it coming from the barrel,
Good red wine, and don’t stir up the dregs,
And don’t think why we shouldn’t be,
More than any other, drunk on guard duty.
192 Charon the carpenter,
Citizen of Thasos.
193 The Cretlan.
194
195 What a burden off my neck!
What a joy to escape marriage!
Anothertime, Lykambes
father-in-law almost.
I can’t bring you to your knees.
Honor presupposes a sense of shame,
And that you haven’t got.
196 [A scrap
Of paper:]
197 Slavery
Not for me
But then.
197 Here’s a fable, O Kerykides,
With a cudgel for a moral.
A monkey was no longer welcome
In the society of the animals,
And went away, all alone.
Whereupon the fox, his mind
Thick with mischief and plots,
Began hatching a little scheme
Water in one hand, fire in the other,
cursing the fate of overseers, servants,
The Carpathian, the martyr[
Just ahead. there was the trap
And a cage of iron[
198
199 Myself the choir-master
In the chant to Apollo.
Sung to the flute in Lesbos.
200 Tall Megatimos,
High Aristophon,
Pillars of Naxos,
O Great World,
You hold upright.
201 Grape.
202 With head thrown back and long throat,
Crying Euaí! in the Baccanalia.
203 He went away, leaving behind a band of seven
To get Peisistratos’ son home, men who
Kept order easily with zither and fife.
He had led them into Thasos to steal back
The tribute of gold from the raging Thracians:
Great success, for them, for which the people
Paid with grief.
Each drank.
It was the feast of Bacchus.
205 As one fig tree in a rocky place
Feeds a lot of crows,
Easy-going Pasiphilé
Receives a lot of strangers.
206 They chased him
Down the mountain.
207 One half,
One third.
208 Utterly unrefined.
209 A hummock
Of a bulge
At the crotch,
That diner
On eyeless eels.
210
211 There goes
That cornet player.
212 There’s no man she hasn’t
Skinned alive.
213 Now that Leophilos is the governor,
Leophilos meddles in everybody’s business,
And everybody falls down before Leophilos,
And all you hear is Leophilos, Leophilos.
214 Tree t[runk]
]and comp[anion
]jawbone[
215 Fortune save us from
These hairy bottomed fellows.
216 Tender horn.
217 How did you become so bald,
Not even a hair on your nape?
218 Fight! I want a fight
With you as a thirsty man
Wants water.
219 What a behind,
O monkey!
220 Imposter.
221 Lykambes’ daughter
To the furthermost village.
222 In copulating
One discovers
That.
223
224 Season follows season,
Time grows old.
225 Old and
At home.
226 It’s not your enemies
But your friends
You’ve got to watch.
227 I knocked him out the door
With a vine-stump cudgel.
228 [Wa]x soft.
229 Servant to the Muses.
230
231 No man dead
Feels his fellows’ praise.
We strive instead,
Alive, for the living’s honor,
And the neglected dead
Can neither honor
Nor glory in praise.
232 O that I might but touch
Neobulé’s hand.
233 Nightingale.
234 Curl hung
In curl.
235 Paros,
figs,
life of the sea,
Fare thee well!
236
237 The lion ripped him open,
Poor fellow, as soon as
He entered the cave,
And dined on his tripes.
238 Let us hide the sea-king’s gifts,
The wrecked dead Poseidon brings.
239 Swordsman and murderous son
of the blood drinker Ares.
240 Arou[nd]
]toward Thass
Accomplishment[
241 Biting sword.
242 Courage comes with the man
Or he’s no soldier of mine.
243 Lips covered with foam.
244 How it has all crashed together,
Panhellenic disaster,
here on Thasos!
245 From there.
246 Women eager
To recline.
247 Jackass hot
To mate.
248 Rhinoceros.
249 And I know how to lead off’
The sprightly dance
Of the Lord Dionysos,
the dithyramb.
I do it thunderstruck
With wine.
250 Arthmiades,
This present take,
Wine jugs and wine.
A man of glory,
Precise with power,
Wherever among men
Your might strikes,
Astonishment grips
Who sees.
251 Retreat, confusion,
That army.
They were strong.
Hermes saved me.
252 Apollo our protector,
Slay the wicked.
253 You can’t even cross a river
Without having to pay a toll.
254 Lyk[ambes]
255 Sons scythed down
By the governor.
256 The child of
Married people.
257 Soothing.
258 In jeopardy on both horns.
259 No more does this smooth flesh stand slant and bold
Now that it’s withered, and I am old.
It quickens still at splendid eyes,
But its seed bag’s dry, and it will not rise.
Cold winds and winter drive us on.
260 Papa Lykambes,
What’s this you’ve thought up?
What’s distracted the mind
You once had?
Mind? You’re a laugh.
261 You’ve gone back on your word
Given over the salt at table.
262 May he lose his way on the cold sea
And swim to the heathen Salmydessos,
May the ungodly Thracians with their hair
Done up in a fright on the top of their heads
Grab him, that he know what it is to be alone
Without friend or family. May he eat slave’s bread
And suffer the plague and freeze naked,
Laced about with the nasty trash of the sea.
May his teeth knock the top on the bottom
As he lies on his face, spitting brine,
At the edge of the cold sea, like a dog.
And all this it would be a privilege to watch,
Giving me great satisfaction as it would,
For he took back the word he gave in honor,
Over the salt and table at a friendly meal.
263 And are you willing to be whipped
Now that you’ve broken your promise?
264 I consider nothing that’s evil.
265 Father Zeus,
I’ve had
No wedding feast.
266 I’ve worn out
My pizzle.
267 Desire the limb-loosener,
O my companion.
Has beat me down.
268 Voracious, even.
To the bounds
Of cannibalism.
269 I overreached
And another
Bears the bother.
270 What demon tracks you down,
What anger behind this terror?
271
272 Strong lords
Of Naxos.
273 No more
Your face blooms
Soft. Lovely,
It withers.
274 Overlook my ways.
I’m countrified.
275 She’s fat, public,
And a whore.
276 Uninspired but sentimental
Over one sadness or another
As a subject for his poems;
The voluble poet whets his stylus.
277 Curled wool.
278 In time of shame,
Can you spare me the evil?
Kindness flows both ways.
Woman, woman,
Why do you keep me here,
Why this road, of all,
And why do you are at all?
279 How many times,
How many times,
On the gray sea,
The sea combed
By the wind
Like a wilderness
Of woman’s hair,
Have we longed,
Lost in nostalgia,
For the sweetness
Of homecoming.
280 So thick the confusion,
Even the cowards were brave.
281 Birdnests
In myrtle.
282 I despise to see a tall,
Swaggering general
With a beard of curls.
Give me an officer
Who’s short and bow legged,
With his feet planted well apart.
283 Give the spear-shy young
Courage.
Make them learn
The battle’s won
By the gods.
284 Raise your arms
To Demeter.
285 Now your apronstrings won’t tie,
We know your ways.
Hipponu knows them better than any,
And Ariphantos,
Who was spared smelling the thief
Stinking of the goat he’d stolen,
By being away at the wars.
286 Well, my prong’s unreliable,
And has just about stood his last.
287 Upbraid me for my songs:
Catch a cricket instead,
And shout at him for chirping.
SAPPHO
1 Aphródita dressed in an embroidery of flowers,
Never to die, the daughter of God,
Untangle from longing and perplexities,
O Lady, my heart.
But come down to me, as you came before,
For if ever I cried, and you heard and came,
Come now, of all times, leaving
Your father’s golden house
In that chariot pulled by sparrows reined and bitted,
Swift in their flying, a quick blur aquiver,
Beautiful, high. They drew you across steep air
Down to the black earth;
Fast they came, and you behind them, O
Hilarious heart, your face all laughter,
Asking, What troubles you this time, why again
Do you call me down?
Asking, In your wild heart, who now
Must you have? Who is she that persuasion
Fetch her, enlist her, and put her into bounden love?
Sappho, who does you wrong?
If she balks, I promise, soon she’ll chase,
If she’s turned from gifts, now she’ll give them.
And if she does not love you, she will love,
Helpless, she will love.
Come, then, loose me from cruelties.
Give my tethered heart its full desire.
Fulfill, and, come, lock your shield with mine
Throughout the siege.
2 Come out of Crete
And find me here,
Come to your grove,
Mellow apple trees
And holy altar
Where the sweet smoke
Of libanum is in
Your praise,
Where leaf melody
In the apples
Is a crystal crash,
And the water is cold.
All roses and shadow,
This place, and sleep
Like dusk sifts down
From trembling leaves.
Here horses stand
In flowers and graze.
The wind is glad
And sweet in its moving.
Here, Kypris [ ]
Pour nectar in the golden cups
And mix it deftly with
Our dancing and mortal wine.
3 Nothi
ng can take its place in my mind,
This beauty of girls.
4 I loved you once, Atthis, long ago.
5 Graces O with wrists like the wild rose,
Chaste and holy daughters, come,
Come among us, daughters of God.
6 When death has laid you down among his own
And none remember you in all the years to be,
Know, gray among ghosts in that twilight world,
That, offered the roses of Pieria, you refused,
And wander forever in the dark lord Aida’s house
Reticent still, with the blind dead, unknown.
7
And you O Dika weave with your slender hands
A crown of flowers and dill into those lovely curls,
For she comes first before the serendipitous Graces
Who comes in flowers. The uncrowned they turn away.
8 Spring
Too long
Gongyla
Is there any sign from the oracle
To the girls most of all
Hermes, at least, has entered my dreams
I said, O Lord
Not, I swear, by the blessed goddess
None can be pleased by that impending
But if ever any longed to die
To see the lotos heavy under dew
On the banks of Acheron
9 I’ve fouled the weft, the warp, and the shuttle,
Mother my sweet, bewildered by love, by that boy,
And by the slender Aphródita.
10 Why, after so long, should I dream
Of those girlish days?
11 The little girls
Wove crowns
Of leaves.
12 Asleep against the breasts of a friend.
13
I
14 Crying Asia! that famous place,
The messenger came from his dust.
Crying Ektor! the winded runner
Silver with sweat, laughing, Ektor!
Ektor comes from that famous Asia,
From its strange towns with his friends.
They bring home a black-eyed girl
From Theba the high on the Plakia,
The graceful, the young Andrómakha.
They come in the ships on the ocean.
For gifts they bring wrist-chains of gold,
And purple coats and silver jars,
And carved toys incredibly strange,
And things made of ivory.
II
So the runner said.
Quick with astonishment,
Ektor’s father shouted for his friends,
And told the coming the city over.
Ilos’ boys put wheels to the high carts
And hitched the mules. Wives and girls
Came to stand with Priam’s daughters.
Bachelors led the chariot horses;
Charioteers like gods sang commands.
III
A long parade sings its way from the sea.
The flutes are keen and the drums tight;
Charmed air holds the young girls’ songs.
Along the way the people bring them bowls
Of cassia, cups of olibanum and myrrh.
Dancing grandmothers shout the marriage song.
Men and boys march and sing to Páon,
To Apollo of the harp, archer of archers,