Sappho 55
You’ll lie low when you’re dead, and be forgotten by posterity.
No one will think of you with love, who never plucked the roses of
Pieria; in Hades’ hall, you’ll be, as here, invisible,
and flit about, where none can mark, among the corpses in the dark.
Sappho 55
κατθάνοισα δὲ κείσῃ οὐδέ ποτα μναμοσύνα σέθεν
ἔσσετ᾿ οὐδὲ πόθα εἰς ὔστερον· οὐ γὰρ πεδέχῃς βρόδων
τὼν ἐκ Πιερίας, ἀλλ᾿ ἀφάνης κἀν Ἀίδα δόμῳ
φοιτάσῃς πεδ᾿ ἀμαύρων νεκύων ἐκπεποταμένα.
Chris Childers
Christopher Childers has poems, essays, and translations published or forthcoming at Kenyon Review, Yale Review, Parnassus, and elsewhere. He is at work on a translation of Latin and Greek Lyric Poetry from Archilochus to Martial for Penguin Classics.
Also by Chris Childers (see all)
- Ovid: Tristia 3.7 - October 27, 2020
- Victor Hugo: The Satyr - June 8, 2020
- Alcaeus 347 - September 22, 2019