ANYTE OF TEGEA–FIVE POEMS

ANYTE OF TEGEA

Five Poems

     Translated by Mary Hickman

 

 

LOCUST AND CICADA

 

For her locust, nightingale of the tilled fields,

and her cicada basking on oak trunks,

little Myro has sculpted a single burial mound, shedding doll tears:

her two darlings have been pulled under by intractable Death.

 

 

 

 

  

DOLPHIN 

No longer will I shoot my pink neck up from the waves,

exultant, as I charge the deep;

No longer will I blow frothy crowns

all about the bow of the ship

delighting in my image that rides her prow:

The black sea broke me, surging.

It flushed me onto dry sand.

Here I lie, unburied on this narrow shore.

 

 

 

  

 

ROOSTER

 

Never again will your dense feathers whir round me at daybreak,

flushing me from bed,

for the ravager has stolen upon you in sleep

and killed you, tearing your throat with his claws.

 

 

 

 

  

BILLY GOAT

 

The children have put purple reins

on you, billy goat, and fastened a bridle

in your ruddy beard;

they train you to race like a horse

round the temple yard,

making the god laugh like a tickled kid.

 

 

 

  

 

WAR HORSE

 

Damis built this tomb for his chestnut war horse

struck through the heart by blood-mad Ares.

The black blood boiled up through his thick hide

and he soaked the earth in his slaughter.