7 Greeks by Guy Davenport

Author:Guy Davenport [Davenport, Guy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8112-2456-7
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2013-08-31T04:00:00+00:00

ANAKREON

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And your curls in lovely bunches

All shadowy around your slender neck.

You are now as close-cropped as a calf,

And your hair in ravaged handfuls

Lies scattered in heaps on the black ground.

Poor hair! Laid waste by the snippers.

What grief I suffer to see it there.

And what can anybody do about it now?

5 take pity on

The famous woman imploring her god

In anguish so many times over.

How much better off had I been

If you had thrown me, mother,

Into the tall bright waves

Of the ungiving sea

6 O deerslayer Artemis,

God’s bright-haired daughter,

Packmaster of animals

In the mountain forests,

I ask at your knees

That you come where

The Lethaios tumbles

To keep guard over us

In our city and be

Shepherdess as well

Of settled civil folk.

7 This is the man who faced down

The black shields of the Ialysian guard.

8 Butlers in the infantry

Are disaster in the bud.

9 That good-natured cadet Megistes

For going on ten months now

Has sported the willow garland

And cadged our honied wine.

10 A revolt, O Megistes,

Has toppled holy [Samos].

11 You’ll have me the gossip

all over the neighborhood.

12 The talents that tantalized

Talented Tantalos [tantalize me].

13 Bring me the winebowl, come my boy,

To drink in one long swallow back,

Ten cups of water, five of wine,

And do me proud before its god.

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