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.