Horace - 3

Picking up again on Allen's 1980 "Sapphics" class, going through his classoom anthology 

AG: So that was..  [Horace and Thomas Wyatt (bemoaning wasted opportunity)]  Okay..also, there's a great poem by Francois Villon  about an old.. It's called "Ballade de la belle  Heaumière  aux filles de joie" ( "The Complaint of the Fair Helm-Maker Grown Old"). It's a real meticulous description, like her lacking her teeth, and the rheum matter of her eye, and the sagging belly collapsed -  a really horrific description!  This also refers a little bit to the Catullus that we just passed by, that we have all these translations of  - So, "Furius and Aurelius..",  "Tell her of..."   just the page (in your anthologies) before that, if you look - "Furius and Aurelius, True Comrades" (Catullus # 11)   You got that there?

Student:  (In the) Robert Fitzgerald translation?

AG: Yeah, and there are a couple of other translations of that before, but the angle, or idea, is that - three-quarters of the way down -  (Allen begins reading) - "Take a little bulletin to my girl friend,/ Brief but not dulcet:/ Let her live and thrive with her fornicators/Of whom she hugs three hundred in an evening/ With no true love for any, leaving them broken-/Winded the same way./She need not look, as once she did, for my love./By her own fault it died, like a tumbling flower/ At the field's edge, after the passing harrow/ Clipped it and left it." 

and if we go back a little more to the Catullus, we'll find some other versions of that ..

James Cranstoun has a terrible Victorian post-Victorian translation  - page twenty-two.. twelve pages beyond, twelve pages back..see page twenty two -  "The Poet Travels …" - You see that? Anybody not? Anybody can't find it? It's just a few pages

Student: The Poet Travels?

AG: Yea, above that, right above "The Poet Travels..." - two stanzas - (Allen reads from Cranstoun's translation) - "Still let her revel with her godless train,/ still clasp her hundred slaves to passion's thrall,/ Still  truly love not one but ever drain/The life-blood of them all"-    Not very good. That guy tried to..

Student: (One of the better ones..)

AG:  (No, there are ten better ones than that!

Student: Is that the same one?

AG: It's the same one, but he tries to translate it into ten-ten-ten-six, quatrains, ABAB, ten syllables, ten syllables, ten syllables, six syllables. You know, just an approximation o that isn't anywhere near approximate . So that's the trouble with that kind of rhyme. There is.. And then (if) we go back further, you'll find.. how many pages back?, oh, about..
Isn't that bad! - See how bad it can get!

If you go back to the Loeb, there's this little tiny-type Latin on one side, English on the other. [Allen displays] - "This is the way the page looks" - Go back to those. Another ten (pages) back, (eight back, I don't know). It begins "Furius Aurelius.." - on the the right hand side of the page - "Furius Aurelius" - Got it? - Right hand side of the page - "Furius Aurelius"

Student: Oh, there's the original Latin.

AG: Yeah, there's the original Latin. 

Furi et Aureli, comites Catulli,
sive in extremos penetrabit Indos,
litus ut longe resonante Eoa
tunditur unda,

sive in Hyrcanos Arabasve molles,
seu Sacas sagittiferosve Parthos,
sive quae septemgeminus colorat
aequora Nilus,

sive trans altas gradietur Alpes
Caesaris visens monimenta magni,
Gallicum Rhenum, horribile aequor, ulti-
mosque Britannos,

omnia haec, quaecumque feret voluntas
caelitum, temptare simul parati,
pauca nuntiate meae puellae
non bona dicta.

cum suis vivat valeatque moechis,
quos simul complexa tenet trecentos,
nullum amans vere, sed identidem omnium
ilia rumpens;

nec meum respectet, ut ante, amorem,
qui illius culpa cecidit velut prati
ultimi flos, praetereunte postquam
tactus aratro est.

And this is the Loeb library literal translation. "Bid her go and be happy with her paramours, three hundred of whom she holds at once in her embrace, not loving one of them really, but again and again, draining the strength of all."

And a translation by Horace Gregory - I don't think you've got it here..let me see.. (going) further back…

Student:  No, below, right below (it).

AG: Really? By Horace Gregory? - No, this, of that same poem .. Well, it's a couple back, two back, you'll find the (Roy Arthur) Swanson version - One page.. page eleven (it says page eleven on the top), it's just a couple down… Find it? - "Furius, Aurelius, friends of Catullus.." and, on the right, "That fellow seems to be the same as God"' [a translation of Sappho]/ Yes? You've got that?

"Furius Aurelius, friends of Catullus" (says one). So it says -"..tell her to live with her rakes and be well,/ hugging three hundred or more at a time,/ loving not one but, in favor to all,/ pumping their loins." 

And then there is a translation, another translation around, let's see if I can find it.

Student: There's the Michie one in there.

AG: Yeah, that's what we just.. where's the Michie?, yeah… Do we have the Michie translation of that tho'? - Yeah - ((a) couple (of pages) before, you'll find Michie - "Good luck to her.." - It's about three from the top, three or four from the top . It's right after the Latin, right after the Greek, right after the Greek stuff,  three from the top - "Furius Aurelius, loyal comrades".. - "translated", at the bottom, "by James Michie". Got that? Three from the very top. Got it? - 

So the line there is  "Good luck to her, let her enjoy her lovers,/ the whole three hundred that she hugs together,/ loving none truly, by grim repetition/Wringing them all sperm-dry" - I think I read that one before

and in Horace Gregory's transation of that is "Live well and sleep with adulterous lovers./ Three hundred men between your thighs embracing all love turned false again, again and breaking their strength, now sterile..."  

Well, I think, "wringing them all sperm-dry" is pretty good. What the… I don't know what the (word) "rumpens"  means - break?  ilia rumpens - the Latin means breaking, I think.

Okay, lets see going on what else have we got here? -  Why don't we do another one, a nice Sapphic. Is there a nice Sapphic there that might...? - By Horace? - (yes) -  A little bit more of Horace now, something different.

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately thirty-seven-and-a-quarter minutes in, and concluding at approximately forty-two-and-a-half minutes in]

Sappho's Hymn to Aphrodite - 2

[Sappho's "Hymn to Aphrodite" read in the original Greek in 1981 by Professor Stephen G Daitz ((including reproduction of Ancient Greek tonal inflections) for SORGLL (Society for the Oral Reading of Greek and Latin Literature)]

Ποικιλόθρον᾽ ὰθάνατ᾽ ᾽Αφροδιτα,
παῖ Δίοσ, δολόπλοκε, λίσσομαί σε
μή μ᾽ ἄσαισι μήτ᾽ ὀνίαισι δάμνα,
πότνια, θῦμον.

ἀλλά τυίδ᾽ ἔλθ᾽, αἴποτα κἀτέρωτα
τᾶσ ἔμασ αύδωσ αἴοισα πήλγι
ἔκλυεσ πάτροσ δὲ δόμον λίποισα
χρύσιον ἦλθεσ

ἄρμ᾽ ὐποζεύξαια, κάλοι δέ σ᾽ ἆγον
ὤκεεσ στροῦθοι περὶ γᾶσ μελαίνασ
πύκνα δινεῦντεσ πτέῤ ἀπ᾽ ὠράνω
αἴθεροσ διὰ μέσσω.

αῖψα δ᾽ ἐχίκοντο, σὺ δ᾽, ὦ μάσαιρα
μειδιάσαισ᾽ ἀθάνατῳ προσώπῳ,
ἤρἐ ὄττι δηὖτε πέπονθα κὤττι
δἦγτε κάλημι

κὤττι μοι μάλιστα θέλω γένεσθαι
μαινόλᾳ θύμῳ, τίνα δηὖτε πείθω
μαῖσ ἄγην ἐσ σὰν φιλότατα τίσ τ, ὦ
Πσάπφ᾽, ἀδίκηει;

καὶ γάρ αἰ φεύγει, ταχέωσ διώξει,
αἰ δὲ δῶρα μὴ δέκετ ἀλλά δώσει,
αἰ δὲ μὴ φίλει ταχέωσ φιλήσει,
κωὐκ ἐθέλοισα.

ἔλθε μοι καὶ νῦν, χαλεπᾶν δὲ λῦσον
ἐκ μερίμναν ὄσσα δέ μοι τέλεσσαι
θῦμοσ ἰμμέρρει τέλεσον, σὐ δ᾽ αὔτα
σύμμαχοσ ἔσσο.

Allen Ginsberg's 1980 Naropa class (from 1980 "Basic Poetics") on Sappho continues

AG: Now, one more sounding of it (Sappho's "Hymn to Aphrodite")  in Greek, and then (a) sounding of it in Catullus (another version of it). John Burnett, who you know, a fellow-student here [Naropa], is also a Greek scholar, and so we went over to see how his sounding would be [Allen to John Burnett] - "What was your… what was the nature of your training?

Student (JB): Well, I studied classics at the University of Utah, mostly, but..

AG: Uh-huh. And what was the angle of the way they taught their Greek there?

Student (JB): (I don't know about the angle, they studied Greek Literature)

AG: I mean, in terms of pronunciation. Did they stress the…

Student (JB): They gave us.. they gave us the pronunciation that (Ed) Sanders is using, Sanders is using a pronunciation that was more or less invented by German scholars (it sounds very German, actually) and….

AG: Maybe you could come up, bring your chair up?  bring this (microphone) closer, bring your chair..

Student (JB): So when you hear a meter, that will sound a good deal different from Modern Greek. Modern Greek, instead of being very harsh... like he (Sanders) says... can sound reasonable - or semi-reasonable.  I actually taught the same period pronunciation, and then I had a lot of Greek in Church... Since I've had a lot of (experience of) pronunciation, I've learned to distinguish (the) German from (the) Greek

AG: So we'll do that one Sappho, to the young girl, and then also Catullus, and you have both of these here. [to John Burnett] - maybe with your hands maybe you could mark the ends of the line, so you don't have to..you don't have to pause (there but if you) make a definite mark

Student (JB): Yeah, the interesting thing about this one is that she breaks words in the middle.  I notice there's some in the third line of the first verse that's broken right in half, so she came up with a style there

AG: And you'll find that in the translations -  that  the translator will break the word in the middle.

Student (JB): You all have it?

AG: It's a the top. The first or second of the poems. The beginning, It's where it all starts out. Has everybody got a copy of this?… Everybody got a copy? Anyone who needs one got a copy?  - It's the one with the Greek on it.

Student (JB) That's the caesura

AG: Caesure in English.. Go on.

[JB reads, in the original Greek, Sappho's "Hymn to Aphrodite] 

Student (JB): I made two mistakes.

AG: Well, (in) which lines did you make a mistake?

JB: The last line should be.. σύμμαχοσ ἔσσο. [JB sounds it out]

AG: See, that sounds.. Well, that sounds slightly different. Everything sounds slightly different, according to what school and what teacher he (you) went to, really.

Student 1: That was what Ed Sanders read here last year.
Student 2 : No,what he read was the next page after that.

Lets  go to the Catullus

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately sixteen-and-a-quarter minutes in and concluding at approximately twenty minutes in] 

Sappho continues - (Hymn to Aphrodite - Ed Sanders)

[Ed Sanders performs Sappho"  (accompanied by Steven Taylor) from a Danish CD from 1990 - "Songs in Ancient Greek"]

AG: So to begin with now, beginning with Ed Sanders again.. but a different recording by Ed Sanders than the one I found last night. I mentioned that he was working with the five-finger electronic pulse-lyre (to substitute for the four-stringed tortoise-shell lyre). Mixolydian mode - I don't know if he's actually using a Mixolydian Mode - This [that I'm about to play] is a performance by Ed Sanders of the "Hymn to Aphrodite" with his pulse-lyre - December 1978, I think, or (19)79 - December (19)78, at the Nova Convention for William Burroughs. This is not a good performance. It was one of his first public performances trying on his pulse-lyre (in other words, (trying) to take the Sapphic lyre, and make an electronic instrument out of it, but an instrument that one man could carry around…

(Student arrives late - AG: "Here we go again...will you take a copy of.. there's an anthology .. is Mike still in there? ..Well, ok... and take an Index too.. and they're two dollars, if you can afford it. (But) If you can't afford it…")

So, (as) the substitute for the Sapphic (lyre), he wanted a modern electronic instrument, but he wanted one that was portable, that he could carry around , that could be operated by touching the fingers together likes this [Allen demonstrates) to make tones - kind of robotic electronic tones but actual different tones following the Sapphic tones. So he'll begin with the "Hymn to Aphrodite", and, for some reason or other, he wanted to show its correlation with English language poetry, so the verses of the "Hymn to Aphrodite" are sung in English and Greek and they are mixed with verses by William Blake - "The modest Rose put forth a thorn,/ The humble sheep a threat'ning horn". I forgot..you'll hear it, but you'll....you'll hear the rest of it, a little quatrain, and then also one other little poem by Blake. He was just trying to show (either) some correspondence of how he would treat Blake that way and how he would treat Sappho that way

Allen then plays a recording of Ed Sanders performance  from the 1978 Nova Convention - 

Ed Sanders: Sappho was born on Lesvos around 650 BC and she started a sort of Venusian Vassar and invented her own mode of verse called the mixolydian. And I'm going to do tonight the two extant poems of Sappho in the original Greek, and I'll also try to do the translation. The first poem by Sappho I'll do is the "Hymn to Aphrodite" and it is sort of a Fundamentalist Aphroditean dance, in which Sappho summons from Heaven Aphrodite. and Aphrodite comes. 
Hymn to Aphrodite  -  "Splendor-throned deathless/love-ploy-plotting Aphrodite, /Daughter of Zeus, I pray to thee./Do not overwhelm my heart/with cares and griefs,my Queen/ But come to me now, if ever now and/again in the past, listening from afar/, you heard my prayers and harnessed/your golden chariot to leave/your father's realm, thy chariot/drawn by two swift swans with/thickly flashing wings from heaven/through the middle of the upper sky/down upon the darkling earth…."

AG: He's got his own translation there (I assume you've all been following it.You might turn to some (other) translation to see how it..,  to the "Hymn to Aphrodite", which will be on  page three…of the (Willis) Barnstone (edition of Sappho)

 (Another Student arrives, Allen gestures to the xerox materials - "It's right up front" -  Ok, I'll continue" - (Allen continues playing Ed Sanders reading)….

" The swift swans brought thee/quickly near, o Aphrodite/ and you asked me,/with a smile on your deathless face,/ what it was that/ made me suffer so, and why/ was I crying out, (and) what/did I want most specially/ to assuage my raging heart?/ "Whom shall I persuade", /you asked, "to bring you/the treasure of torrid love?/ Who, o Sappho,/ who wrongs thee?/  If she flee thee/swiftly shall/ she dance at/ thy heels/ And if she not/ take thy gifts/ swiftly shall she/ give/ And if she does not,/ swiftly shall/ she glide in/ the beams of desire/ even be she unwilling/at first" you said/ to me Aphrodite/ O come to me once, o/ Aphrodite and free me from this harsh love pain!/ And that which my soul   craves to be done/ do it, do it,  o do it!/  You thyself, in living person/ be thou my ally!"   



Ed Sanders:  I'll do it in the Greek now and also I'm going to do it sandwiched in with a couple of short poems by William Blake, one "The Lilly" (from "Songs of Experience") and the other "The Question Answered " (from "Poems and Fragments")  [Sanders continues his performance]

AG: So that record (that recording) is available, actually, printed on John Giorno's Nova Convention two-album set, which was a celebration of (William) Burroughs in New York, about a year-and-a-half ago, where John Cage, (Ed) Sanders, Patti Smith, a bunch of rock and music and poetry people got together… so that's available, if anybody is interested in getting it (but I think we have it in the library also , if anybody else wants to hear it).  

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approxinately eight minutes in and concluding at approximately twenty-four minutes in]

Davenport's Sappho and Alkman

Following on from yesterday's post. Here's a few more selections from Guy
Davenport's book of classic Greek translations. We'll start off with, arguably, Sappho's most famous lyric - phainetai moi  (Sappho 31) -  

Φαίνεταί μοι κήνος ἴσος θέοισιν
ἔμμεν ὤνηρ, ὄστις ἐναντίος τοι
ἰζάνει, καὶ πλυσίον ἆδυ φωνεύ-
        σας ὑπακούει

καὶ γελαίσας ἰμερόεν, τό μοι μάν
καρδίαν ἐν στήθεσιν ἐπτόασεν·
ὡς γὰρ εὔιδον βροχέως σε, φώνας
        οὺδὲν ἔτ' εἴκει·

ἀλλὰ κὰμ μὲν γλῶσσα ἔαγε, λέπτον δ'
αὔτικα χρῷ πῦρ ὐπαδεδρόμακεν,
ὀππάτεσσι δ' οὐδὲν ὄρημ', ἐπιρρόμ-
        βεισι δ' ἄκουαι.

ἀ δέ μίδρως κακχέεται, τρόμος δέ
παῖσαν ἄγρει, χλωροτέρα δὲ ποίας
ἔμμι, τεθνάκην δ' ὀλίγω 'πιδεύης
        φαίνομαι [ἄλλα].

ἀλλὰ πᾶν τόλματον, [ἐπεὶ καὶ πένητα].

He seems to be a god, that man
Facing you, who leans to be close
Smiles, and, alert and glad, listens
To your mellow voice

And quickens in love at your laughter
That stings my breasts, jolts my heart
If I dare the shock of a glance
I cannot speak

My tongue sticks to my dry mouth
Thin fire spreads beneath my skin
My eyes cannot see and my aching ears
Roar in their labyrinths

Chill sweat slides down my body
I shake, I turn greener than grass
I am neither living nor dead and cry
From the narrow between

But endure even this grief of love.

William Carlos Williams' translation:

That man is peer of the gods who
face to face sits listening
to your sweet speech and lovely
                     laughter

It is this that rises a tumult
in my breast. At mere sight of you
my voice falters. my tongue
                    is broken

Straightway, a delicate fire runs in
my limbs, my eyes
are blinded and my ears
                    thunder 

Sweat pours out: a trembling hunts
me down. I grow
paler than grass and lack little
                   of dying

Ed Sanders translation

Equal to the gods
is the man who sits
in front of you leaning closely 
and hears you sweetly speaking
and the lust-licking laughter
of your mouth, oh it makes
my heart beat in flutters

When I look at you
Brochea, not a part of my
voice comes out
but my tongue breaks,
and right away
a delicate fire runs just beneath
my skin

I see a dizzy nothing
my ears ring with noise
the sweat runs down
upon me, and a trembling
that I cannot stop
seizes me limb and loin,
o I am greener than grass,  and
death seems so near…..

Some Davenport Alkman

from his introduction: "Alkman, born in Sappho's Lydia and a resident in a city where Archilochos would have felt at home, Sparta, is something of a mixture of those two. Like Sappho he wrote songs for girls to sing, like Archilochos, he looks at the world with a tempered eye.."

from the Fragments

(3)
And Kastor and Polydeukes
The glorious skilled horsemen
Tamers of wild stallions

(7)
A: Sing, O Muse. sing high and clear
     O polytonal many-voiced Muse
B: About the towered temple of Therapne
C: Waves rolling seaward to a silent shore

(13)
Girls scattered helter-skelter
Chickens and hawkshadow

(14)
O Father Zeus
That I had a husband

(31)
Ino, queen of the sea,
Upon whose breasts

(34)
One roll of the dice
Stirs up the ghosts

(35)
My hearth is cold but the day will come
When a rich pot of red bean soup
Is on the table, the kind that Alkman loves,
Good peasant cooking, nothing fine
The first day of autumn, you shall be my guest

(37)
Seven tables, seven couches
Poppy cakes, flaxseed cakes,
Sesame cakes, drinking cups
Of beaten gold

(41)
Artemis! O thou dressed
In wild animal skins

(44)
Whoever they are
Neighbors are neighbors

(49)
Come dancing, come singing
Bright-eyed angel of music
Join us in song, in praise,
Master of the graceful foot
O Kalliopa, daughter of Zeus

(50)
This is the music Alkman made
From partridge dance and partridge song
With his flittering partridge tongue

Archilochus

In preparation for an upcoming spotlight on Greek and classical texts on the Allen Ginsberg  Project in the coming weeks, a post on a book that is sadly out of print - Guy Davenport's Archilochos, Sappho, Alkman - Three Lyric Poets of the Late Greek Bronze Age (fortunately, it's been expanded and reprinted, and is freely available from New Directions as 7 Greeks - the additional poets are Anakreon, Herakleitos, Diogenes and Herondas)

                                                             [Guy Davenport  (1927-2005)]

Is it too early to note what an extraordinary figure Davenport was? (even outside of his remarkable achievement as a translator - "writer, translator, illustrator, painter, intellectual and teacher" - (Wikipedia struggles hard, but inevitably vainly, to try to encapsulate him). As a young Rhodes Scholar in Oxford in the late 1940's he wrote a pioneering thesis on James Joyce. Soon thereafter, he took as his mentor Ezra Pound, "rejecting", as one writer has noted,  "the poet's mad politics, but cherishing his pervasive cultural intelligence" - Like Pound, Davenport has "turned translation into an art form, making dead tongues speak with a jolting vernacular urgency". 

His Archilochus, first appearing as Carmina Archiloci - The Fragments of Atchilochus  (1964) 
- Archilochus, 7th Century BCE poet brought miraculously to life! 

Ed Sanders on Archilochus - "..It's difficult to describe Archilochos in one short flow of words. He was viewed by the Ancients as one of their greatest poets. Unfortunately only fragments survive due to the destruction of the Ancient library by the Christians and the Muslims. In his own time the secret police of Sparta, known as the Krypteia, ordered his books to be removed because of their blunt erotic language. He was extremely inventive. He created several new muses and was known for his robust and confessional and genius way with words."

Davenport, from his introduction (well worth reading in its entirety)  - "Archilochus  is the second poet of the West. Before him the archpoet Homer had written the two poems of Europe; never again would one imagination find the power to move two epics to completion and perfection. The clear minds of these archaic, island-dwelling Greeks  [Archilochus, Sappho, Alkman] survive in a few details only, fragment by fragment, a temple, a statue of Apollo with a poem engraved down the thighs, generous vases with designs abstract and geometric…

"These fragments have I stored against my ruin.."

To cite only a few Archilochus fragments (in their Davenport translation):

(3)
Let him go ahead
Ares is a democrat
There are no privileged people
On a battlefield

(5) 
Listen to me cuss

(9)
With ankles that fat
It must be a girl

(12)
As a dive to a sheaf of wheat,
So friends to you

(21)
Dazzling radiance

(36)
He comes, in bed
As copiously as 
A Prienian ass
And is equipped
Like a stallion

(42)
There are other shields to be had,
But not under the spear-hail
Of an artillery attack,
In the hot work of slaughtering.
Among the dry racket of the javelins
Neither seeing nor hearing

(50)
Watch, Glaukos, Watch!
Heavy and high buckles the sea.
A cloud tall and straight 
Has gathered on the Gyrean mountain-tops
Forewarning of thunder, lightning, wind.
What we don't expect comes fearfully.'
War, Glaukos, war

(54)
The arrogant
Puke pride

(57)
Hot tears cannot drive misery away.
Nor banquets and dancing make it worse

(70)
What breaks me
Young friend
Is tasteless desire
Dead iambics
Boring dinners

(71)
Greet insolence with outrage

(76)
To make you laugh
Charilaos Erasmonides
And best of my friends,
Here's a funny story

(86)
Everything
Perikles
A man has
The Fates
Gave him.

(87)
Everything
People have
Comes from
Painstaking
Work

(97)
Zeus gave them
A dry spell

(99)
Boil in the crotch

(1o4)
Our very meeting
With each other
Is an omen

(107)
Begotten by
His father's
Roaring farts

(108)
His attachment to the despicable
Is so affectionate and stubborn
Arguments can't reach him

(116)
Let us sing
Ahem
Of Glaukos who wore
The pompadour

(134)
Great virtue
In the feet

(139)
A great squire he was,
And heavy with a stick
In the sheeplands of Asia

(146)
Like the men
Of Thrace and Phrygia
She could get her wine down
At a go
Without taking a breath
While the flute
Played a certain little tune
And like those foreigners
She permitted herself
To be buggered

(162)
He's yoke-broke
But shirks work,
Part bull, part fox.
My sly ox

(171)
Ignorant and ill bred
Mock the dead

(183)
Fox knows many,
Hedgehog one
Solid trick

Alter:
Fox knows
Eleventythree
Tricks and still
Gets caught;
Hedgehog knows 
One but it
Always works

(205)
As one fig tree in a rocky place
Feeds a lot of crows
Easy-going Pasiphile
Receives a lot of strangers

(213)
Now that Leophilos is the governor
Leophilos meddles in everybody's business
And everybody falls down before Leophilos
And all you hear is Leophilos Leophilos

(222)
In copulating
One discovers
That

(232)
O that I might but touch
Neobule's hand

(235)
Paros
           figs
                 life of the sea
Fare thee well

(249)
And I know how to lead off
The sprightly dance
Of the Lord Dionysus
- the dithyramb - 
I do it thunderstruck 
With wine

(261)
You've gone back on your word
Given over the salt at table

(264)
I consider nothing that's evil

(268)
Voracious, even
To the bounds
Of cannibalism

(281)
Birdnests
In  myrtle

(283)
Give the spear-shy young
Courage
Make them learn
The battle's won
By the gods

(287)
Upbraid me for my songs
Catch a cricket instead
And shout at him for chirping


Now whet your palette with an Archilochos Rock & Roll Wail Out.

Sappho and Alkman to follow tomorrow