WINTERLONG

[For you] the fragrant-blossomed Muses' lovely gifts
[be zealous] girls, [and the ] clear melodious lyre.

[but my once tender] body old age now
[has seized] my hair's turned [white] instead of dark.

My heart's grown heavy, my knees will not support me,
that once on a time were fleet for the dance as fawns.

This state I bemoan, but what's to do?
Not to grow old, being human, there's no way.

Tithonus once, the tale was, rose-armed Dawn
love smitten, carried him off to the world's end

handsome and young then, get in time grey age
o'ertook him, husband of immortal wife.


Poem:  Sappho, Fragment 58, from Köln Ms., Martin West translation, 2005. 

Winterlong -- Neil Young (Link).

Image:  Clark Blickensderfer, Ptarmigan In Winter, From Pictorial Photography In America, 1922.

Laura Gilpin

I thought of you as my Mountaintop;

 Thought of You as my peak.

 Thought of you as Everything,

I had But couldn’t keep.

Linger on, Your pale blue eyes.

If I could make the world as Pure

And Strange as what I see,

I’d put you In the mirror

I put in front of Me.

Linger On, Your Pale Blue Eyes.

Laura Gilpin Photographs:  

Upper, Laura and Turkeys, Autochrome, ca. 1913-15;  

Lower, The Moon of the Red Gods, 1922.

Pale Blue Eyes: Velvet Underground (Link)