1131. On Himself - Heliodora (About 100 B.C.)

Translated from the Greek by Burton Raffel

I grew on Tyre.

I was born in Syria,

And I came out of Eucrates,

I, Meleager, who taught my muse

To run on barbed feet.

I’m a Syrian, should anyone be surprised?

But stranger, all of us live in one country: the world.

All of us were born in the same Chaos.

And when I grow old

I wrote this epitaph for myself,

Knowing that old age and death live side by side.

Say something to wish this wordsmith well,

And live to be a wordy old man like me.

Heliodora (about 100 B.C.) - Spring

Translated from the Greek by Burton Raffel

Winter winds have blown out of the sky,

The purple spring flowers happily.

The dark earth drapes herself in green

And plants burst into leaf, their newborn hair waving.

Fields drink the dawn dew and grow,

Laughing as roses open. Shepherds in the hills

Shrill bright melodies on their pipes,

And goatherds count and re-count their white kids.

Sailors are out on the broad sea,

Zephyr puffing out their sails.

Men wear crowns of ivy and cry “Evoe!”

To honor Bacchus, father of wine.

Bees buzz into being, stir and work their hives,

Constructing artful many-celled combs.

And all the races of birds sing everywhere,

Clear and loud: kingfishers near the water,

Swallows around our houses, swans by the river’s edge,

Nightingales deep in the woods.

And if leaves and plants are happy, the the earth sprouts,

And shepherds pipe, and sheep play and dance in the meadows,

And bees make honey,

How can a poet be silent, seeing beautiful spring?