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Poems from the Latin of
SEXTUS PROPERTIUS
Cynthia
Restored
Cynthia
Victrix
CYNTHIA
RESTORED
The
Spirits do exist. Death’s
never the end of us.
The fires of
cremation baffled, the pale ghost escapes.
For
Cynthia came, a vision, inclining across my pillow—
lately interred in
the brouhaha of the roadside—
to
see the poor insomniac, lately from love’s wake come,
racked that the
sheets that were once his estate were cold.
...
Propertius (translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
(For full translation
see the Kindle ebook The Translations of Alan Marshfield)
CYNTHIA
VICTRIX
Something
tonight has scared the paludal Esquiline;
the
neighbourhood ran amok through the New Fields.
Lanuvium’s
tutelar presence is an ancient serpent—
a
rare hour loitering there will not be wasted.
There
a sacred descent is torn down a dark gully
where
offerings come to the scrawny-gutted snake
(virgins,
beware such tracks) when he claims his annual
food-tribute,
wrenching his hiss from earth’s insides.
...
Propertius (translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
(For full translation
see the Kindle ebook The Translations of Alan Marshfield)
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