Translated by Natasha Bershadsky Dioscuri The bodies, sturdy, in their sinewy nature, there is a symmetry. Their youth is a sacrifice to the goddess and the goddess recompensed it. If death were a recompense there would be no living to remember the dead and the exertion of the heroes toward… Read more
You can be a mother who knows a god,And you can ask him for magic armor,A shield the width of Saturn’s widest rings,Some helmet in the new or ancient style,Fill your arms with defenses for your child,Take the peacock feather you’ve been offeredAnd plant it in that helmet’s crown, or… Read more
There are two cities on earth Divided by time and kindness And at the centre of their field Is a king who sits in silence About him move the reapers Drawing in the living grain Goodness or the void deceit That human life advances On the edges of this world… Read more
Down the path between the apples through the maple grove of suicides then left at the old wall along the wire fence to the brook- bank where narcissus noses into skunk cabbage and hepatica: Call me Apollo, crashing in the underbrush with my arrows, my bow saw and clippers out… Read more
Translated by Natasha Bershadsky Hippolytus and Phaedra To Gregory Nagy narration Hippolytus, young, beautiful and modest, son of Theseus and some Amazon, was devoted to Artemis, scorning Aphrodite. The offended goddess of love inspired in Phaedra, his stepmother, a vehement passion for him: she used to go… Read more
'Rage,' Homer sings. 'Sing the rage of Achilles.' Twenty-three raids, twenty-three sieges of cities, all taken, feeding soldiers and the pride-lust of commanders. Read more
