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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.
It
was still the same, her hair, as it was at her funeral;
her eyes the same;
and the cloth at her side was charred.
The
fire had eaten the beryl ring that was on her finger,
and her lips were
chapped with the surface waters of Lethe.
Both
were alive: the voice coming from her, the understanding;
but on her hand a
splintery thumb-bone rattled.
‘You
bastard, though one couldn’t have hoped for a better man . . .
Can sleep get to
work so soon, when I’m hardly cold?
Our
sleepless intrigues in the Subura erased so early?
And the sill our
nocturnal tactics had worn away,
which
I threw a rope from so often, dangling from it
for
your sake,
coming to enlace
your neck, down hand over hand?
Our
souls would blend as we made love on the forked highroad,
our mantles giving
the cobbles a little heat.
So
much for the unspoken contract whose fraudulent wording
the boisterous
unhearing rain-wind has swept away!
As
my eyes were going out did no one call after me?
If you had recalled
me I’d have had one more day.
No
watchman in my poor honour
gave a rap with his cloven cane,
and my head,
exposed, was gashed with a broken tile.
And
did a single soul see you stooped at my grave in grief
or see your black
toga grow hot with a stifled tear?
If
you jibbed at going farther than up to my gate, at least
you might have seen
the bier with less haste sent round.
Why
did you, you, not petition the winds, thankless, for my tinder?
Why did my flames
not emit aromatic spikenard?
Was this too
much, to fling hyacinths, not exorbitant,
or propitiate my
barrow from a spilt wine-jar?
And my serf Lygdamus: whiten the iron for him, cauterise
him!
I knew from the wine
when my blood went racing from it
. . .
And
let Nomas, sly as she is, hide her vials of arcane salivas!
The scorching pit
she used then will point to her:
only lately in
public eyed up and down through her cut-price nights,
and now marks the
ground with a gold-inlaid modish hem;
who loads her
bolshie maid with lumpier knitting baskets
if the jabberer has
excessively praised my beauty.
And Petale—because
she took a wreath to the cemetery,
the
old thing gets fettered to a disgusting log.
Strung up by her
writhing hair, Lalage’s cut to pieces
because
she dared mention rue when she asked a favour;
and you gave her that
gold statuette of me to be melted down,
and so she acquires a dowry from my cremation.
Yet I won’t hound you, though you deserve it,
Propertius,
of me;
my despotic
sovereignty in your verse was long.
I swear by the
irreversible spell of the Fates, and may
the
triple dog, for this, gentle its yelp around me,
I was always
faithful to you. If I am lying then may
vipers
hiss on my mound, make my bones their bed.
There are two
haunts distributed by the ugly river
and
all the riot dead must row either water;
one conveys the
polluted Clytaemnestra, another carries
the freak timbers of
the counterfeit Cretan cow.
But look, a
garlanded sloop sweeps away yet another lot
where holy breezes
caress the Elysian rose;
melodious strings
and Cybele’s circular cymbals bang
to the strum of the
Lydian orchestra dressed in turbans.
Andromeda and
Hypermestra, those stainless wives,
relate the events,
notable souls, they suffered.
One moans of the
maternal chains that have bruised her arms
and the glacial
rocks her hands had not merited.
Hypermestra tells
of her sisters’ enormous daring
and how she had not
the courage for such a crime.
And so with the
tears of death we heal the desires of life;
I myself conceal
your betrayals’ atrocities.
But
now I am giving you orders—if by chance you can be affected,
if the
herbs of Chloris have not yet seduced you wholly:
don’t
let my nurse, Parthene, go short when she’s old and shaking;
she put up with you,
you never have found her greedy.
And
don’t let my darling Latris—her name’s from latreuein—‘serve’—
extend the
looking-glass for a new employer.
And
all those poems you have written around my name,
burn them for me,
stop winning praise through me.
Push
the ivy off of my mound, which amasses and struggles with
its hairy twists
bandaging my small bones apart.
And
where fruit-bearing Anio communes with its branchy regions
and Hercules sees
that the ivory never yellows,
these
lines, I am worthy of them, write square on a pillar, but
make them, so the
hurried commuter may read them, brief:
HERE
LIES THE GOLDEN CYNTHIA IN THE FIELDS OF TIBUR:
NOW FAME
IS ADDED, ANIO, TO YOUR BANKS.
And
do not reject apparitions coming through holy porches,
when holy the
apparition comes, it has weight.
By
night we veer abroad, night loosens the pent-up ghost;
even Cerberus goes
vagrant, the bolts dismantled.
At
dawn we make for the swamps, compelled by Lethean law;
we sail; the
ferryman catalogues his freight.
For
now give yourself to others, soon I alone will have you,
and mixed in the
grave I’ll grind you, bone on bone.’
When
in this way she’d ended her querulous dispute with me,
her spirit
disappeared, my embrace was empty.
(translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
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.
Girls
sent down to these sacraments turn anaemic when
their
rash hand entrusts itself between his fangs.
Whatever
titbit the virgin pokes at him he snatches
and
the basket jitters in the virgin’s hand.
If
they’ve been chaste they’ll return, hugging their parents’
necks,
and
the farmers cry, ‘It’ll be a good year now.’
To
this place my Cynthia was led by tonsured ponies,
respecting
Juno—she should have said for Venus.
Tell
me, Appian Way, how much triumph, to your knowledge,
she
drove in, splattering her wheels along your cobbles?
Then
an ugly punch-up in a furtive bar got noisy—
I
wasn’t hurt, but my reputation was.
She
was a marvellous sight as she crouched across the shaft-butts,
daring
to give rein through the dirty slums.
Though
I’ll not detail the equipage, the Molossian dogs,
and
the Chinese silks of that creep she had in tow.
Soon
he will sell his future for a vile circus feed
when
a shameful beard smudges his pampered cheeks.
And
it was because she had so often wronged our bed
I
made up my mind to strike tent and couch elsewhere.
There’s
a Phyllis along the Aventine near Dian’s temple—
I
don’t like her sober: drunk, she’s fanciable.
And
there’s Teia: she lives by the Tarpeian sacred clearing;
she’s
a blonde, and slewed, one lover’s not enough.
They
would soothe the night away. I made a stand: invite them,
and
renovate my affairs with some untried tricks.
There
was a bunk for three on a secluded lawn.
Do
you ask how we had it off? I lay between.
A
service of glass for the summer, Lygdamus at ladle,
and
the Methymnaean taste of neat Greek wine.
An
Egyptian flute-player! Castanets, Phyllis twisting—
no
make-up but pretty, pleased to have a rose tossed!
And
Magnus himself, with short arms, truncated legs,
clapping
his maimed hands to the boxwood flute.
But
the flame was unsteady from the lamp, though filled with oil,
and
the tray fell face-down on its pedestal.
While
I rooted for sixes from the next dice and the next
the
losing singles kept on bumping out.
They
bared their tits, I was blind; they sang, but I was deaf;
at
Lanuvium’s gates, indeed, I stood alone.
Then
suddenly a door-hinge grated, and a murmur
was
made in the forecourt of my sacred home!
Suddenly,
Cynthia! Both doors were flung against the wall:
her
hair uncared for, becoming in her frenzy.
My
fingers loosened, let the goblet in them fall;
my
lips, though eased with wine, lost all their red.
Her
eyes electric, she lashed out with all the woman in her—
no
less a spectacle than a sacked city.
Her
angry fingernails lacerated Phyllis’ face;
scared
Teia shrieked across the near canals,
Lifted
torches disturbed the groggy citizens
and
every footway rang with the loud night.
They
were swallowed by the first pub in that shady side-street,
their
blouses undone, their hairstyles torn to rags.
Cynthia,
victrix, pleased with these shreds of war, returned,
bruising
my face perversely with her palm,
inflicting
on my neck her mark, biting the blood out,
and
above all making my eyes jog—they’d deserved it.
When
pummelling me had tired her, she jerked out Lygdamus,
who
was to the left somewhere, hiding under
the
bed. Exposed, he called on my protecting geist:
Lygdamus,
I was useless—captured too.
At
last, with supplicatory hands, I met her terms,
though
she’d scarcely show her foot for me to hold.
She
said: ‘If you want me to overlook
your little faults,
hear
what the format of my law’s to be.
Never
stroll about in Pompey’s Arcade in your best,
nor
in the lecherous Forum when the sand’s strewn.
Don’t
twist your neck, at the play, to gawk at the top circle;
and
when a litter’s unveiled, don’t lurk around.
Above
all, let the whole cause of my sorrow, Lygdamus,
be
sold, and drag from his feet a brace of chains.’
And
so she laid down her law. ‘I will stick to it,’ I said.
She
laughed, elated with the power I’d given.
Then
she fumigated with scent each place the other girls
had
touched, and washed down the doorstep with clear water.
She
ordered me to change into other outdoor clothes
and
touched my head three times with burning sulphur;
and
when every sheet on the mattress had been changed too, I matched her:
we
sheathed the sword on the familiar bed.
(translated
by Alan Marshfield)
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