A CERTAIN SPRING (H.D. EXCERPT)

 

delicate the weave,

fair the thread:

clear the colours,

apple-leaf green,

ox-heart  blood-red:

rare the texture

woven from wild ram,

sea-bred horned sheep:

 

the stallion and his mare,

unbridled, with arrow-pattern,

are worked on

the blue cloth

Note:  The above excerpt from H.D.'s 1957 poem Fair The Thread appears in Guy Davenport's introduction to his 7 Greeks translations volume.  Davenport cites the lines as an example of a conscious imitation by H.D. of Sappho.  The entire poem contains only a few additional lines, which appear at the poem's beginning and end.  

Davenport's point is a valid one and interestingly, I think, this abridgement is a better, more powerful and affecting poem, than H.D.'s original, integral version.

NOT POSSIBLE TO HAPPEN (SAPPHO)

I would rather see her lovely step

and the motion of light on her face

than chariots of Lydians or ranks

     of footsoldiers in arms.

     ] not possible to happen

     ] to pray for a share

     ]    

     ]

     ]

     ]

     ]

     toward [

     ]

     ]

     ]

     out of the unexpected.

 

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.