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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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