"Autobiographies of great nations are written in three manuscripts – a book of deeds, a book of words, and a book of art. Of the three, I would choose the latter as truest testimony." - Sir Kenneth Smith, Great Civilisations

"I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine." - Leo Tolstoy

I have never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again. - John Updike

"The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it." - J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations." - Lawrence Ferlinghetti


[Note - If any article requires updating or correction please notate this in the comment section. Thank you. - res]


Monday, September 5, 2011

Kathleen L. Housley - The Painting of Water


The Painting of Water

by Kathleen L. Housley



“I can give perfect satisfaction...
in guiding water from one place to another.”

-Leonardo da Vinci*

*While Leonardo da Vinci was painting the Mona Lisa, he was working with Niccolò Machiavelli as a hydraulic engineer (in Italian, maestro di acque) on plans to divert the Arno River with the goal of making Florence into a seaport. The recent discovery of the New World by Columbus and the subsequent voyages by the Florentine Amerigo Vespucci heightened the project’s importance. Leonardo completed extensive aerial drawings and designed an earth-moving machine. However, the engineer hired to do the job radically changed the design, decreasing the depth of the canal from 30 to 14 feet. In 1504, the project was abandoned when a flood collapsed the walls and 80 soldiers drowned.



The Painting of Water

I.

Even in his dreams there are rivers,
murmuring to the Maestro of Water
to study the vortices of rapids,
the swirling formation of eddies,
to sketch the velocity of floods
roaring down the Tuscan hills,
comparing their hydraulic power
to the dark force of blood coursing
through narrow arterial tunnels,
to draw as well the slow process
of streambed sedimentation similar
to the silting up of veins in old age,
revealed to him by covert dissection
and rigorous analyses as clandestine
as his ideas of evolutionary change.

He wakes with a start, inundated
by the torrent of too many ideas
gushing from the headwaters
of his brain, and before sunlight
glints on the Adriatic and suffuses
pink the Apennines’ eastern slopes,
he jumps from his bed and lets loose
a little rivulet of sepia ink across
the flood plain of an empty page:
here winding into a design for wings,
there looping into a rotating bridge,
before diverting to vacant space
near the paper’s edge where it turns
into a cataract of mirror-imaged words
about shell fossils embedded in cliffs
and geological time far more vast
than Biblical reckoning—Noah’s flood
and crowded ark being replaced
by repeated submergences separated
by the slow uplift of stratified rock.

II.

Given the super-saturation of his mind,
how can he paint her young anatomy
other than as liquid panorama?
Posing for him now, La Gioconda flows,
the ripples in her sleeves like standing waves
reflecting gold, the curlicues of her hair
under a diaphanous veil identical
to swirls of spray at a waterfall’s base.
Had there been no expectation by patrons
that a portrait be painted skin-side-out,
he would be delighted to draw her ribs
arching beneath the pleats of her dress,
the spreading delta of arteries and veins
within her hands, the pulse in her wrist
palpable beneath the hairs of his brush,
whispering of a hidden riparian system
more complex than that of the Arno
which he has recently surveyed,
drawing a detailed bird’s-eye view
as part of a scheme to divert the river,
making his beloved city of Florence,
fifty miles inland, into a prosperous port,
all of which he intends to include
in the background, underpainted blue,
along with jagged peaks, green valleys,
a stone viaduct crossing a stream,
a sinuous road and a bay leading
in the distance to a New World
beckoning in a warm golden haze,
light and shade blending like sea foam,
so that while he seems to portray
a beautiful woman, as he touches
her outlined lips with the brush’s tip,
he siphons into her ineffable smile
the confluence of her bloodstream
and the Earth’s primordial waters,
upwelling with his own heart’s awe
into a landscape beyond the curve of time.

III.

Nearly finished,
he leaves a digit
in her left hand
incomplete,
as if he fears
a final stroke
will stop up
all of nature,
defying
the laws of motion
and stilling
the Prime Mover
who of necessity
must move
or all the world
be dead.
Dynamics
demands that
he unsettle
equilibrium;
one undone
finger,
and her heart
pumps.


Kathleen L. Housley, 2011



About the Author

Making her home in Connecticut, Kathleen L. Housley graduated from Upsala College and holds a Masters from Wesleyan University. Her research and writing interests display a faithful humanism that is both deep and wide, integrating such diverse fields of inquiry as 19th-century suffragism, abolitionism, and Bible translation, the history of art and art collecting in the Modern period, cosmology, anthropology, and the material sciences—all in addition to theology and poetry. Her latest three books are Black Sand: The History of Titanium (2007); a book of poetry, Firmament (2008); and Keys to the Kingdom: Reflections on Music and the Mind (2010), a collection of meditations on the transformative power of music and friendship. Her work has appeared in the journals Image, Isotope, The Christian Century, and Ars Medica, and her poem “A Psalm for a New Human Species” previously appeared on the BioLogos website, in addition to the first of her Leonardo poems, “The Painting of Wings.”






Kathleen L. Housley - The Painting of Wings


The Painting of Wings

by Kathleen L. Housley



“The bird is an instrument functioning
according to mathematical laws,
and man has the power to reproduce
an instrument like this with all its movements.”

- Leonardo da Vinci*

*The opening quote is from the Codex Atlanticus. The quote “tomorrow morning I shall make the strap and the attempt,” is dated January 2, 1496. In his notebooks, Leonardo wrote that the attempt should be made over a lake with a wineskin for a life preserver. He also wrote that destruction could occur if “the machine breaks” or “turns edgewise.” There is no record of whether the attempt actually took place. The Annunciation was probably painted around 1472 when Leonardo was still in Verrocchio’s workshop. There is disagreement as to whether he painted it entirely, but there is agreement that he painted the angel.



The Painting of Wings

I.

More like copious field notes than paintings,
Leonardo finishes few, and even those he considers
works in progress that stopped progressing,
like lava that spewed from a fiery vent
then congealed into a cold parody of motion.
Regretfully, he recalls his half-fledged angel,
painted years before careful observation
and anatomical sketches of hawks and swifts
riding effortlessly on rivers of wind
revealed to him that flight is achieved
by force of air, not physical strength.
Weighed down by short muscular wings
that jut from his scapula, the angel
would have been forced to deliver
the annunciation message on foot,
trudging across a landscape, lovely yet awry,
to kneel at last before the Virgin who reads
from an out-of-perspective Bible. All wrong.

II.

Now he prepares to make amends,
not with paint but with real wings
made with reed bones and linen skin,
designed to finesse the air instead of
pommeling it into submission,
more like those of a bat than a bird.
He jots in his notebook “tomorrow morning
I shall make the strap and the attempt.”
Yet he hesitates, sharing with Daedalus
a concern for catastrophic system failure,
which leads him to decide against jumping
off the roof of the Corte Vecchia,
choosing instead to launch from a cliff
beside a lake, wrapped in soft chamois
to protect his bones, with an empty wineskin
tied securely around his waist
in case the whole thing come unglued
and he plummet, like Icarus, from the sky.

III.

Leonardo deems it the boy’s own fault
for not paying attention to his father’s warnings
about the narrow operating parameters
and material limitations of wings,
specifically the low melting point of beeswax
if he should fly too near the sun,
and the weight of water on the feathers
if he should fly too near the waves.
But Daedalus had to share some of the blame
for perceiving of wings as nothing more
than a practical means of escape,
impervious to the joyous uprush of blue.

IV.

Darkness descends, and Leonardo recalls
his childhood dream of a hawk hovering
over his cradle, while in the refectory,
the dim glow from a lamp illumines
the scaffolding before The Last Supper,
and in his workshop candlelight flickers
on the clay model of a great horse,
both awaiting his hands and mind
to reach perfection, heightening his fears
that he may have miscalculated
the mathematical laws of flight,
and that the morning’s planned attempt
should be postponed until he is sure
the sum does not equal his own death.

V.

As he falls asleep, he thinks he hears
the ominous vibration of wing struts.
He centers his weight, struggling
not to turn edgewise to the wind,
until all at once, in equilibrium,
he glides on the streams of the sky
before beginning a spiral descent,
landing at last by an earth-bound angel
who listens raptly to a woman reading aloud
from the Codex on the Flight of Birds.


Kathleen L. Housley, 2011



About the Author

Making her home in Connecticut, Kathleen L. Housley graduated from Upsala College and holds a Masters from Wesleyan University. Her research and writing interests display a faithful humanism that is both deep and wide, integrating such diverse fields of inquiry as 19th-century suffragism, abolitionism, and Bible translation, the history of art and art collecting in the Modern period, cosmology, anthropology, and the material sciences—all in addition to theology and poetry. Her latest three books are Black Sand: The History of Titanium (2007); a book of poetry, Firmament (2008); and Keys to the Kingdom: Reflections on Music and the Mind (2010), a collection of meditations on the transformative power of music and friendship. Her work has appeared in the journals Image, Isotope, The Christian Century, and Ars Medica, and her poem “A Psalm for a New Human Species” previously appeared on the BioLogos website.






R.E. Slater - Jars of Clay (a poem)




Jars of Clay
by R.E. Slater



Is there a reconciliation that may be found

At the weathered hands of Father Time -

Where hearts are broken beyond remits

Groaning loving-care’s clarion chimes?

Ringing o' ringing in the halls of wear

Unheard a dulled ear’s deaf stirrings -

Unwearied ensnaring grasping fares

Soon ruined a dark reef’s moorings?

Then away, away, come away at once

To faith’s fraught shoals and lauded lands -

Where sycamore trees arise tall bonded communions

And butterscotch'd groves flow o’er grace’s rolling strands.

Bathed in rosetted fugues of cherry blossoms perfuming sweet airs

And there lie 'twining amid the hallowing silences of shrouded black boles -

In spellbound hush o'er lush verdant swards of pilloried souls risen all-glorious

Whence plucked from death’s withering hands and unsparing scythe unreaped.

Lifting as thrice bound sonatas upon forgiveness’ flutes of fruit’d harmonies

Bursting unfettered lo discord’s mighty lairs of chaining darkness -

Ruptured from cold earth's torn despairs and chiming griefs

Forever moored a glad Fellowship’s eternal fortresses.

Nay, if ever a reconciliation ere be found in thee

Pray fall Incarnate Love unsparingly -

Poured from yielded earthen jars of knelling clays

Birthing sweet ambrosial nectars remitting parched souls a’thirst.


                                                                                                  - R.E. Slater
                                                                                                      Sept – Nov, 2011

                                                                                                                                                                                            @copyright R.E. Slater Publications

                                                                                                                                                            all rights reserved


The rich black boles of blooming cherry trees

AUTHOR’S NOTES

I have written and re-written this verse attempting to purge its sealed mysteries into sight for us poor earth-bound souls faithless and benighted in humanity’s withholding cloths of fleshly concerns and mortal pales. I wanted to fashion a poem that collided intense descriptions with lurid imagery, and against irregularly compressed metaphors, again, and again, and again, until we wearied of the words and could only read it numbed and lost within the verse’s sublimity.

I further wished to avoid reading this poem in tripping verse, or in everyday rhyming parlance, and have broken up the meter just enough to momentarily pause the eyes and arrest our attentions. There is, however, a slight cadence that can be found within its phrases when initiated by breathing stops and pauses. I also imposed an uncommon structure onto it that would mash together its sacred thoughts into a blinding composition of white light whose prismatic rainbow is only seen when read more thoughtfully.

Lastly, I wished to convey life’s greater adventures found within the rich compositions of everyday joys and wonders, beheld in the arts, in sound and canvas, horticulture and nature, sacred communions and worship. How each abounds to us at the Divine’s hand as they can abound from ourselves to one another’s hands when practicing the arts of service to one another. For is not the heart of creation like that of its Creator?

Hence, we may deliver life - against death’s imposing grip - when seeking to help and assist those near to us in common ways. Through the simplicities of listening, sharing, respecting, loving. We do this in the knowledge that we are chosen vessels brought into this life to enrich one-another’s lives - however beggarly they may first appear to our sight or circumstances. For it is not the vessel itself that brings life’s fullness to bear, but the ambrosial nectars that that vessel holds within which enriches friendships and fallow, wheel and fortune.

Curiously, this poem’s thematic elements blend in with its visual shape, and when later discovering this I made both one, into a visual poem about becoming jars of clay. For it is in the very act of service to others - and only then - that our true purpose may be found in acts of sharing with one another in a community of common-use pottery. Some dinged up and battered, others enriched and ornate. But no matter, it is the nectars within the vessel that gives all-and-one joy and usefulness. And yet, there are some pots that are cracked, and others that leak, that can give no service to anyone until bound-up and restored into service’s assembly. The metaphor extends even further when considering unused dusty bowls and unwashed pots unprepared for service to anyone until discovered and re-purposed by a fellowship’s divine.

For should we disdain the use of our talents and abilities, powers and resources, knowledge and connections, it is to give harm to our societies forever fraught with greed and ambition, pride and jealousy, unkindness and sin. But to become vessels that pour out grace and mercy, humility and kindness, courageousness and truth, is to present a society of men and women strengthened into living, organic fortresses immovable, beauteous and inviting.

So then, it is not how pretty the pot… nor how banged-up and unpainted the bowl or jar…. Value is not found in the thing itself. But in the vessel’s use and service. A simple thing to explain but one forever misunderstood in practice and practicalities. Be then mere “jars of clay” become vessels useful for service.

R.E. Slater
Nov 7, 2011


But now, O LORD, you are our Father;
we are the clay, and you are our potter;
we are all the work of your hand.

                                                  - Isaiah 64.8

But we have this treasure in jars of clay,
to show that the surpassing power
belongs to God and not to us.

                                                              - 2 Corinthians 4.7


Cherry Blossoms





Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Eels - Hey Man (Now You're Really Living)

 
 
 



 
Eels - Hey Man (Now You're Really Living)



EELS LYRICS
Hey Man (Now You'Re Really Living) Ringtone Send "Hey Man (Now You'Re Really Living)" Ringtone to your Cell Hey Man (Now You'Re Really Living) Ringtone

"Hey Man (Now You'Re Really Living)"

Do you know what it's like to fall on the floor
And cry your guts out 'til you got no more
Hey man now you're really living

Have you ever made love to a beautiful girl
Made you feel like it's not such a bad world
Hey man now you're really living

Now you're really giving everything
And you're really getting all you gave
Now you're really living what
This life is all about

Well i just saw the sun rise over the hill
Never used to give me much of a thrill
But hey man now you're really living

Do you know what it's like to care too much
'bout someone that you're never gonna get to touch
Hey man now you're really living

Have you ever sat down in the fresh cut grass
And thought about the moment and when it will pass
Hey man now you're really living

Now you're really giving everything
And you're really getting all you gave
Now you're really living what
This life is all about

Now what would you say if i told you that
Everyone thinks you're a crazy old cat
Hey man now you're really living

Do you know what it's like to fall on the floor
And cry your guts out 'til you got no more
Hey man now you're really living

Have you ever made love to a beautiful girl
Made you feel like it's not such a bad world
Hey man now you're really living

People sing
Do you know what it's like to fall on the floor
And cry your guts out 'til you got no more
Hey man now you're really living

Just saw the sun rise over the hill
Never used to give me much of a thrill
But hey man now i'm really living





Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Awesome Indie quotes

all credit is due this very awesome indie site - http://www.ohsoindie.com/home



I wanted your secret to be about me.
Like mine was about you.
But it wasn't.
'My body is a cage that
keeps me from dancing with the one I love.'


A careless bird is complicated,
an empty nest still leaves a space.'


'They might get a little better air
if they turned themselves into a cloud.'


"You look so good in the clothes of a poser
And when you smiled all the kids fell apart here
I know a place where it's warm and it's dry, dear
Let me take you there"



I'd like to see you undone.
Youth's the most unfaithful mistress.

Still we forge ahead to miss her.
Rushing our moment to shine.



I want to buy you a lot of pretty things
and shyly offer them to you one at a time.



I wish we'd always wake up new.
Refreshed and born again
with nothing left to lose.



Because if seeing is believeing,
then believe that we have lost our eyes.



While you are away
My heart comes undone
Slowly unravels
In a ball of yarn.



Not knowing how to think,
I scream aloud, begin to sink,
My legs and arms are broken down,
With envy for the solid ground,

I'm reaching for the life within me,
How can one man stop his ending,

I thought of just your face,
Relaxed, and floated into space.



And I found this boy, he had a girlfriend at home,
But I swear I didn´t know for sure, and he said wait don´t go,
can I walk you home, to your hotel or so.



I think i'm a little bit in love with you,
But only if you're a little bit, little bit,
Little bit, In lalalala love with me.




I'm a bad boy cause I don't even miss her,
I'm a bad boy for breakin her heart,
And I'm free, free fallin, fallin.




Words are very unnecessary
They can only do harm,
Enjoy the silence...




You know that I could use somebody,
Someone like you and all you know,
And how you speak.



This is how it works,
You're young until you're not,
You love until you don't,
You try until you can't,
You laugh until you cry,
You cry until you laugh,
And everyone must breathe,
Until their dying breath.


On the radio,
We heard November Rain,
That solo's real long,

But it's a pretty song,
We listened to it twice,

Cause the DJ was asleep.


Tell me am I right to think that there could be nothing better,
Than making you my bride and slowly growing old together?
Don't you feed me lies about some idealistic future,
Your heart won't heal right if you keep tearing out the sutures.


Those three words,
Are said too much,
They're not enough.



That's why I copy and paste into your folder with your name,
it'd be more than I can take if I just told you, told you what I feel.



You talk too much.
Maybe that's your way,
Of breaking up the silence,
That fills you up.


I know that we're takin' chances,
you told me life was a risk,
but I just have one last question...
will it be my heart or will it be his?


I think separation is ok,
You’re no star to guide me anyway.



You are my sweetest downfall,
I loved you first.



And tomorrow there's no school,
So lets go drink some more Red Bull,
And not get home 'till about 6:00 o'clock.






*for more awesome Indie/Emo/Alternative quotes from songs and elsewhere
go to this very cool Indie site - http://www.ohsoindie.com/indie-quotes


**for more awesome Indie Music - http://www.ohsoindie.com/indie-music







Thursday, August 25, 2011

Ethel Waxham - The American West




The American West


I know a land where the gray hills lie

Eternally still, under the sky,

Where all the might of suns and moons

That pass in the quiet of nights and noons

Leave never a sign of the flight of time

On the long sublime horizon line.







Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Sappho - Selected Poems and Fragments

http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Greek/Sappho.htm#_Toc76357041

Translated by A. S. Kline © 2005 All Rights Reserved
This work may be freely reproduced, stored, and transmitted, electronically or otherwise, for any non-commercial purpose.

Sappho - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sappho
(play /ˈsæf/; Attic Greek Σαπφώ [sapːʰɔː], Aeolic Greek Ψάπφω [psapːʰɔː]) was an Ancient Greek poet, born on the island of Lesbos. Later Greeks included her in the list of nine lyric poets. Her birth was sometime between 630 and 612 BC, and it is said that she died around 570 BC, but little is known for certain about her life. The bulk of her poetry, which was well-known and greatly admired throughout antiquity, has been lost, but her immense reputation has endured through surviving fragments.

Contents

‘Glittering-Minded deathless Aphrodite’3
‘Be here, by me’4
‘Come to me here from Crete’5
‘The stars around the beautiful moon’6
‘He is dying, Cytherea, your tender Adonis,’7
‘Some say horsemen, some say warriors’8
‘Stand up and look at me, face to face’9
‘Love shook my heart’10
‘He’s equal with the Gods, that man’11
‘But you, O Dika, wreathe lovely garlands in your hair,’12
Fragments, on Love and Desire. 13
Fragments, on the Muses. 16
‘I have a daughter, golden’18
‘Hesperus, you bring back again’19
‘Girls, you be ardent for the fragrant-blossomed’
‘The Moon is down’20


‘Glittering-Minded deathless Aphrodite’


Glittering-Minded deathless Aphrodite,
I beg you, Zeus’s daughter, weaver of snares,
Don’t shatter my heart with fierce
Pain, goddess,

But come now, if ever before
You heard my voice, far off, and listened,
And left your father’s golden house,
And came,

Yoking your chariot. Lovely the swift
Sparrows that brought you over black earth
A whirring of wings through mid-air
Down the sky.

They came. And you, sacred one,
Smiling with deathless face, asking
What now, while I suffer: why now
I cry out to you, again:

What now I desire above all in my
Mad heart. ‘Whom now, shall I persuade
To admit you again to her love,
Sappho, who wrongs you now?

If she runs now she’ll follow later,
If she refuses gifts she’ll give them.
If she loves not, now, she’ll soon
Love against her will.’

Come to me now, then, free me
From aching care, and win me
All my heart longs to win. You,
Be my friend.




‘Be here, by me’

Be here, by me,
Lady Hera, I pray
Who answered the Atreides,
Glorious kings.

They gained great things
There, and at sea,
And came towards Lesbos,
Their home path barred

Till they called to you, to Zeus
Of suppliants, to Dionysus, Thyone’s
Lovely child: be kind now,
Help me, as you helped them…




‘Come to me here from Crete’

Come to me here from Crete,

To this holy temple, where
Your lovely apple grove stands,
And your altars that flicker
With incense.

And below the apple branches, cold
Clear water sounds, everything shadowed
By roses, and sleep that falls from
Bright shaking leaves.

And a pasture for horses blossoms
With the flowers of spring, and breezes
Are flowing here like honey:
Come to me here,

Here, Cyprian, delicately taking
Nectar in golden cups
Mixed with a festive joy,
And pour.




‘The stars around the beautiful moon’

The stars around the beautiful moon
Hiding their glittering forms
Whenever she shines full on earth….
Silver….




‘He is dying, Cytherea, your tender Adonis,’

He is dying, Cytherea, your tender Adonis,
What should we do?
Beat your breasts, girls, tear your tunics…




‘Some say horsemen, some say warriors’

Some say horsemen, some say warriors,
Some say a fleet of ships is the loveliest
Vision in this dark world, but I say it’s
What you love.

It’s easy to make this clear to everyone,
Since Helen, she who outshone
All others in beauty, left
A fine husband,

And headed for Troy
Without a thought for
Her daughter, her dear parents…
Led astray….

And I recall Anaktoria, whose sweet step
Or that flicker of light on her face,
I’d rather see than Lydian chariots
Or the armed ranks of the hoplites.




‘Stand up and look at me, face to face’

Stand up and look at me, face to face
My friend,
Unloose the beauty of your eyes.....




‘Love shook my heart’

Love shook my heart,
Like the wind on the mountain
Troubling the oak-trees.




‘He’s equal with the Gods, that man’

He’s equal with the Gods, that man
Who sits across from you,
Face to face, close enough, to sip
Your voice’s sweetness,

And what excites my mind,
Your laughter, glittering. So,
When I see you, for a moment,
My voice goes,

My tongue freezes. Fire,
Delicate fire, in the flesh.
Blind, stunned, the sound
Of thunder, in my ears.

Shivering with sweat, cold
Tremors over the skin,
I turn the colour of dead grass,
And I’m an inch from dying.




‘But you, O Dika, wreathe lovely garlands in your hair,’

But you, O Dika, wreathe lovely garlands in your hair,
Weave shoots of dill together, with slender hands,
For the Graces prefer those who are wearing flowers,
And turn away from those who go uncrowned.




Fragments, on Love and Desire

I

…..You burn me…..

II

Remembering those things
We did in our youth…

…Many, beautiful things…

III

…Again and again…because those
I care for best, do me
Most harm…

IV

You came, and I was mad for you
And you cooled my mind that burned with longing…

V

Once long ago I loved you, Atthis,
A little graceless child you seemed to me

VI

Nightingale, herald of spring
With a voice of longing….

VII

Eros, again now, the loosener of limbs troubles me,
Bittersweet, sly, uncontrollable creature….

VII

………..but you have forgotten me…

VIII

You and my servant Eros….
IX
Like the sweet-apple reddening high on the branch,
High on the highest, the apple-pickers forgot,
Or not forgotten, but one they couldn’t reach…

X

Neither for me the honey
Nor the honeybee…

XI

Come from heaven, wrapped in a purple cloak…

XII
Of all the stars, the loveliest…
XIII

I spoke to you, Aphrodite, in a dream….

XIV

Yet I am not one who takes joy in wounding,
Mine is a quiet mind….

XV

Like the mountain hyacinth, the purple flower
That shepherds trample to the ground…

XVI

Dear mother, I cannot work the loom
Filled, by Aphrodite, with love for a slender boy…




Fragments, on the Muses

I

And when you are gone there will be no memory
Of you and no regret. For you do not share
The Pierian roses, but unseen in the house of Hades
You will stray, breathed out, among the ghostly dead.

II

The Muses have filled my life
With delight.
And when I die I shall not be forgotten.

III

And I say to you someone will remember us
In time to come….

IV

Here now the delicate Graces
And the Muses with beautiful hair…

V

It’s not right, lament in the Muses’ house…
….that for us is not fitting….

VI

Here now, again, Muses, leaving the golden…

VII

Surpassing, like the singer of Lesbos, those elsewhere…




‘I have a daughter, golden’

I have a daughter, golden,
Beautiful, like a flower -
Kleis, my love -
And I would not exchange her for
All the riches of Lydia......




‘Hesperus, you bring back again’

Hesperus, you bring back again
What the dawn light scatters,
Bringing the sheep: bringing the kid:
Bringing the little child back to its mother.




‘Girls, you be ardent for the fragrant-blossomed’

Girls, you be ardent for the fragrant-blossomed
Muses’ lovely gifts, for the clear melodious lyre:
But now old age has seized my tender body,
Now my hair is white, and no longer dark.

My heart’s heavy, my legs won’t support me,
That once were fleet as fawns, in the dance.


I grieve often for my state; what can I do?
Being human, there’s no way not to grow old.


Rosy-armed Dawn, they say, love-smitten,
Once carried Tithonus off to the world’s end:
Handsome and young he was then, yet at last
Grey age caught that spouse of an immortal wife.




‘The Moon is down’

The Moon is down,
The Pleiades. Midnight,
The hours flow on,
I lie, alone.