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THE
BIRTH OF VENUS
After
the terrifying night had passed
with
shouting, agitation, rioting,
the
waters broke, again the ocean screamed.
And
as the screaming slowly ceased, annealed,
and
from day’s pale announcement in the sky
died
down into the fishes’ dumb abyss,
the
sea gave birth.
The
hair of the wide foaming wave-pudenda
shone
in the early sun, and from the slit
the
girl uprose, white, tousle-headed, damp.
And
as a young green leaf will slowly stir,
stretch
up and slowly open out, uncurl,
her
body was spread out into a coolness
and
to the virgin early morning breeze.
The
knees were like two moons as they climbed clear
and
dived up at the cloud-rim of the thighs;
the
narrow shadows of the calves receded
as
her extended feet became shell-bright;
and
all her joints became as much alive
as
drinkers’ throats.
Neat
in the pelvic chalice lay the belly
like
a new fruit held in a small child’s hand,
while
deep within her navel’s narrow cup
was
all the dark side of life’s clarity.
Lower
there lightly heaved the little crest
that
overflowed for ever through the loins
from
which sometimes a quiet trickle fell.
Translucent
though, and still without a shadow,
most
like a stand of silver birch in April,
empty
and warm, unhidden, lay the vulva.
Already,
vibrant scales, the shoulders rose
evenly
balanced on the slender torso,
which,
from the pelvis, like a fountain sprang
and
in the long arms hesitantly fell
and
eagerly in the full fall of hair.
Then
slowly came her face, emerging out
from
the foreshortened darkness of its tilting
into
a clearness, level and uplifted,
abruptly,
after ending in the chin.
Now,
while the neck was stretched out like a jet
and
like a stem in which the sap is rising,
the
arms began to stretch out too, like necks
of
swans when they are making for the shore.
Into
this body’s shadowy dawn then came
like
morning wind the first and primal breath.
In
the most tender boughs among the vein-trees
a
whispering arose, and blood began
to
murmur down through the deep-set domains.
And
this wind bolstered up until it beat
with
all the breath it had in the new breasts
and
filled them up and squeezed itself into them
so
that, like sails, completely filled with distance,
they
carried the light maiden to the shore.
And
so the goddess landed.
While
behind her,
as
she moved swiftly past the new-made shores,
there
sprang up everywhere the morning long
such
flower heads and stems, warm and entangled
as
if from being hugged! She strode. She ran.
At
noon, however, at that most turgid time,
the
sea climbed up yet once again and slung
a
dolphin out upon the selfsame mark.
Dead,
red and open.
(Translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
TOMBS
OF THE HETAIRAI
In
their long hair they lie, with leather-brown
deeply-down-into-self
retracted faces.
Eyes
shut, as if before too great a distance.
Skeletons,
flowers, mouths. And in the mouths
the
smooth teeth like a set of ivory
pocket-chess
pieces in two lines erected.
And
flowers, yellow pearls, and slender bones,
and
hands and shifts, the fabric of the cloth
sagging
above the crumpled heart. But there
among
those rings, among the talismans
and
eye-blue stones (favoured remembrances)
there
still exists the silent crypt of sex,
up
to its arches filled with yellow petals.
And
yellow pearls again, loose, scattered wide,—
dishes
of kiln-fired clay, the curve of which
her
picture once adorned,—and moss-green shards
of
ointment vases that once smelt like flowers,—
and
shapes of little gods there: household altars,
hetairai-heavens
with enraptured gods!
An
unclasped girdle, a flat scarabaeus,
small
carvings with enormous genitals;
a
laughing mouth and chorus girls and sprinters,
gold
fibulas resembling little bows
in
beast-and-bird-hunt scenes on amulets;
and
long pins, decorated house utensils,
and
a round potsherd with a reddish ground
on
which, like a black script above an entrance,
the
taut legs of a four-in-hand horse team.
And
yet more pearls and flowers, scattered widely,
a
miniaturised lyre with glossy loins
and,
between the veils that fall like haze,
as
if hatched from the pupa of its shoe:
an
ankle’s vulnerable butterfly.
And
they are lying thus, filled up with things,
with
sumptuous things, toys, jewels, household goods,
with
shattered knickknacks (fallen into them)
in
darkness like the bottom of a flood.
For
they were river beds,
and
over them in short and hasty waves
(desirous
only of the coming life)
bodies
of many youths would hurl themselves,
and
also in them rivers of men would boom.
And
sometimes boys would break out of the mountains
of
childhood and come falling shyly down
to
play with things upon the valley floor,
until
the steepness overcame their senses.
Then
they’d fill up with shallow, lucid water
all
the expanse of these expansive courses
and
beat up whirlpools in the deepmost places,
reflecting,
the first time, the river banks
and
the far cries of birds—whilst, high above,
the
starry nights of a sweet countryside
gaped
in a heaven that would nowhere close.
(Translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
ORPHEUS.
EURYDICE. HERMES.
It
was that awesome underground of souls.
Like
silent lines of silver ore they went,
like
veins in the mine’s dark. Through roots of trees
rose
up the blood that goes toward mankind,
a
massive sight, porphyry in the darkness.
Otherwise,
nothing red.
Great
rocks were there;
woods
of no presence, too. Bridges on emptinesses
and
that immense, grey, dull and tarnished lake
that
far above its distant bottom hung
like
rain in heaven high above a landscape.
Through
meadowlands, softly and full of patience,
appeared
the pale strip of a single path
like
a long line of flax laid out to bleach.
And
by this single path came they along.
In
front, the lissom man in the blue mantle,
impatient,
dumb, looked steadily ahead.
In
greedy mouthfuls the path ate his steps,
not
chewing them. His hands were hanging down,
heavy
and clenched, out of the falling folds,
aware
no longer of the lightsome lyre
which
had in his left hand become ingrown
like
a rose tendril in an olive branch.
His
senses seemed as if at variance,
for
while his sight ran like a dog ahead,
turned
round, came back, time and again, and stood
waiting
at the next bend upon the path,—
his
hearing lagged behind him like a smell.
Sometimes
it seemed to him as if it reached
back
to the walking of the other two
who
should be following this whole ascent.
But
once more there was only his climb’s echo
and
throbbing cloak which could be heard behind him.
He
told himself they were still there, however,
said
it aloud and heard it die away.
They
were still there, and yet they were a pair
who
walked with dreadful lightness. If he dared
but
once to turn (were not such backward glance
instant
undoing of all this, his deed,
which
must be managed first), he certainly
would
see the faint pair who in silence followed:
the
god of errand and of distant tidings,
the
wending helm above his shining eyes,
the
slender staff upheld before his body,
whilst
at his ankles beat the little wings;
and
in the caring of his left hand: she.
The
so-belov’d, that from a single lyre
there
came more grief than ever women wailed,
that
a whole world of grief arose, in which
all
things were once more there: forest and valley,
village
and lane, meadow and stream and beast;
and
that around this world of grieving, even
as
round the other earth a sun encircled
and
a whole starry, silent heaven moved,
a
grieving heaven with distorted stars—:
this
so-beloved.
But
she walked with that god, her hand in his,
her
stride restrained by a long winding sheet,
unsure
and gentle and without impatience.
She
was wrapt in herself, like one expecting,
and
did not think of him who went before,
nor
of the path which into life ascended.
She
was wrapt in herself. Her state of death
filled
her as with abundance.
Like
a fruit ripe with sweetness and with darkness,
so
was she full of her enormous death,
which
was so new she did not comprehend.
She
was enclosed in a new maidenhood
and
was untouchable; her sex was closed
as
a young flower is closed toward the evening;
her
hands were now so very unconversant
with
being wed that even the light god’s
endlessly
gentle and conducting touch
she
suffered as too greatly intimate.
She
was already no more that blonde woman
who
in the poet’s songs sometimes had echoed;
she
was no more the wide bed’s scented isle,
and
was not owned by that man any more.
She
was already loosened like long hair,
surrendered
far and wide like fallen rain,
distributed,
a hundredfold supply.
She
was already root.
And
when, abruptly,
the
god stopped her whilst uttering the words
with
torment in his cry: He has turned round!—
uncomprehending,
she said softly: Who?
Yet
far away, and dark in the bright exit
stood
somebody, the man, whose countenance
could
not be recognised. He stood and saw
how
on the strip of single meadow-way,
with
sorrow in his look the god of tidings,
remaining
silent, turned and tracked the form
going
already back by the same path,
her
stride restrained by a long winding sheet,
uncertain,
gentle, and without impatience.
(Translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
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