Complete Poems (21 page)

Honor to all of those who in their lives

have settled on, and guard, a Thermopylae.

Never stirring from their obligations;

just and equitable in all of their affairs,

but full of pity, nonetheless, and of compassion;

generous whenever they’re rich, and again

when they’re poor, generous in small things,

and helping out, again, as much as they are able;

always speaking nothing but the truth,

yet without any hatred for those who lie.

And more honor still is due to them

when they foresee (and many do foresee)

that Ephialtes will make his appearance in the end,

and that the Medes will eventually break through.

For certain people there comes a day

when they are called upon to say the great Yes

or the great No. It’s clear at once who has

the Yes within him at the ready, which he will say

as he advances in honor, in greater self-belief.

He who refuses has no second thoughts. Asked

again, he would repeat the No. And nonetheless

that No—so right—defeats him all his life.

In these shadowed rooms, in which I pass

gloomy days, up and down I pace

that I might find the windows.—For a window

to be open would be a consolation.—

But there are no windows, or I can’t

find them. And perhaps it’s best I don’t.

Perhaps the light will be a new oppression.

Who knows what new things it will show.

Without pity, without shame, without consideration

they’ve built around me enormous, towering walls.

And I sit here now in growing desperation.

This fate consumes my mind, I think of nothing else:

because I had so many things to do out there.

O while they built the walls, why did I not look out?

But no noise, no sound from the builders did I hear.

Imperceptibly they shut me off from the world without.

—What is it that we are waiting for, gathered in the square?

The barbarians are supposed to arrive today.

—Why is there such great idleness inside the Senate house?

Why are the Senators sitting there, without passing any laws?

Because the barbarians will arrive today.

Why should the Senators still be making laws?

The barbarians, when they come, will legislate.

—Why is it that our Emperor awoke so early today,

and has taken his position at the greatest of the city’s gates

seated on his throne, in solemn state, wearing the crown?

Because the barbarians will arrive today.

And the emperor is waiting to receive

their leader. Indeed he is prepared

to present him with a parchment scroll. In it

he’s conferred on him many titles and honorifics.

—Why have our consuls and our praetors come outside today

wearing their scarlet togas with their rich embroidery,

why have they donned their armlets with all their amethysts,

and rings with their magnificent, glistening emeralds;

why should they be carrying such precious staves today,

maces chased exquisitely with silver and with gold?

Because the barbarians will arrive today;

and things like that bedazzle the barbarians.

—Why do our worthy orators not come today as usual

to deliver their addresses, each to say his piece?

Because the barbarians will arrive today;

and they’re bored by eloquence and public speaking.

—Why has this uneasiness arisen all at once,

and this confusion? (How serious the faces have become.)

Why is it that the streets and squares are emptying so quickly,

and everyone’s returning home in such deep contemplation?

Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven’t come.

And some people have arrived from the borderlands,

and said there are no barbarians anymore.

And now what’s to become of us without barbarians.

Those people were a solution of a sort.

We laud many things in Homer, but this we cannot commend.… nor Aeschylus when his Thetis says that Apollo, singing at her wedding,

                                        spoke at length of her great offspring,

                         untouched by illness and of very long life.

                         And then he said my life was blessed by the gods

                         and sang a paean, wishing me all joy.

                         And I had hoped that Phoebus’s divine mouth

                         would be truthful, since it brims with prophetic art:

                         But although he sang these things himself, …

                         … … … … … … it was he who killed

                         my child.

—P
LATO
,
Republic
2

When Thetis and Peleus were being wed,

Apollo rose at the fabulous bridal

banquet, and he blessed the newlyweds

in the offspring that would issue from their union.

He said: Never shall an illness touch him

and he will have long life.— And as he said it,

Thetis greatly rejoiced, because the words

of Apollo, who knew so much of prophecies,

seemed to her a surety for her child.

And as Achilles was growing up, and his

beauty was the glory of Thessaly,

Thetis would remember what the god had said.

But then one day there came old men with tidings,

and told her of the killing of Achilles in Troy.

And Thetis rent asunder her purple clothes

and she cast off the bracelets and the rings

from her body and dashed them to the ground.

And in her grief she remembered ancient things:

and asked them what the wise Apollo was doing,

where he’d wandered off to, the poet who at feasts

spoke so superbly, where he’d wandered off to, the prophet,

while they were slaying her son in his first youth.

And the old men replied to her that Apollo,

he himself, had descended into Troy,

and with the Trojans he had killed Achilles.

Zeus is deep in mourning. Sarpedon

was slain by Patroclus. And now they’re rushing in,

Menoeteus’s son along with the Achaeans,

to seize the body and defile it.

By no means will Zeus consent to this.

His beloved son—whom he allowed

to perish; such was the Law—

will receive his honors at least in death.

And lo, he sends Phoebus down to the plain,

with instructions on how the body should be seen to.

With reverence and with sorrow, Phoebus lifts

the hero’s body and takes it to the river.

Of all the dust and gore he washes it clean;

closes up the wound, so that he leaves

no traces visible; he pours perfumes

ambrosial upon him; and in splendid

garments, Olympian, he clothes him.

He whitens the skin; with a mother-of-pearl

comb he combs the hair of deepest black.

The beautiful limbs he arranges, and lays them out.

Now he resembles a young king, a charioteer,

in his twenty-fifth year, or his twenty-sixth,

who is resting now, since he has won,

with a chariot all of gold and the swiftest steeds,

the trophy in a contest of wide renown.

After Phoebus had fulfilled his mission

in this way, he called for the two brothers

Sleep and Death, and he commanded them

to take the body to the rich land of Lycia.

And toward the rich land there, toward Lycia

they made their way on foot, the two brothers

Sleep and Death, and when at last they reached

the portal of the royal house

they handed over the body, now made glorious,

and returned then to their other cares and tasks.

And when they received it there, in the house, there began—

with processions, and honors, and laments,

and with unstinting libations from sacred vessels,

with everything as it is meet—the mournful burial;

and afterward the city’s expert artisans,

and the craftsmen famed for the work they did in stone

came and made the tomb and the grave-stele.

                         When they saw Patroclus had been killed,

               he who’d been so brave, and strong, and young,

               the horses of Achilles began to weep:

               their immortal nature was indignant

               at this work of death, which it now beheld.

They’d shake their heads and toss their flowing manes,

               and with their feet they’d stamp the ground and grieve

    for Patroclus who they knew was lifeless—undone—

    shabby flesh by now—his spirit vanished—

               left without defenses—without breath—

    returned from life unto the great Nothing.

                         Zeus beheld the tears of the immortal

horses and grieved. “At Peleus’s marriage,”

               he said, “I should never have committed such great folly.

               Better never to have given you away, my

               unhappy horses! What business have you down here

with wretched humanity, the plaything of fate.

               You, for whom neither death nor old age lie in wait,

    are oppressed by passing misfortunes. Men have snared you

    in their afflictions.”—And yet their tears,

               for the everlasting calamity

    of death, the noble creatures kept on shedding.

Exhausted by the world’s seductive instability,

inside this cup of mine I’ve found tranquility;

Life and hope within it I enclose, and longings:

               give ye me to drink.

Here, distant from the woes of life, and from its storms,

I’m like a sailor who’s been rescued from the whelm,

and finds himself aboard a ship that’s safe in harbor:

               give you me to drink.

O! heat of wine salubrious, you send away

every icy influence: nor envy’s chill, nor hate’s,

nor shame’s, nor calumny’s comes near to me:

               give ye me to drink.

No longer do I look upon the graceless truth stripped nude.

I enjoyed another life, I have a world that’s new;

and now I find myself upon the spreading field of dreams—

               give, give me to drink!

And if it’s poison, and I find the bitterness

of death within it, I have yet found happiness,

delight, and joy, and exaltation in the poison:

               give ye me to drink!

To what good, to what avail did fate desire

that I be made a poet, though I be weak?

Vain are my words; the sounds of my lyre

are not true, even those most sweet.

If I wish to hymn a noble sentiment,

glory and virtue are, I sense, but dreams.

Wherever I gaze, I find discouragement,

and everywhere my foot is tripped in thorns.

The earth’s a shadowed sphere: cold, devious.

The world’s inveigling image are my lays.

Love do I hymn, and joy; wretched burlesque,

wretched lyre, of every cozenage the prey!

You are no liar, poet. The world you see

is the true one. Only your lyre’s chords

recognize what’s true; and only they

toward that life will be your trusty guides.

You serve the god. To you he gave the part

of beauty and of spring. Mellifluous

song flows from your lips, of incenses you are

the treasure-house, the voice on high, the golden promise.

If the earth is hid in shadow, do not fear.

Do not think the gloom a constant one.

Friend, to pleasures, blossoms, valleys are you near:

have courage, and step forth. Behold the dawn!

’Tis but a delicate mist affrights your vision.

Kind nature prepares for you beneath her gown

a wreath of roses, violets, noble narcissus,

aromatic recompense for your song.

Progress is a giant edifice—each hefts

his stone: one words, counsels, another

deeds—and every day it lifts its head

higher. Should some tempest, some sudden

storm approach, the good builders make haste

all as one to shield their wasted labor.

Wasted, because the life of each is passed

embracing ills and sorrows for a future generation,