Euripides Translations

These are my modern English translations of epigrams by Euripides. 

Love distills the eyes’ desires, love bewitches the heart with its grace.—Euripides, translation by Michael R. Burch

Fools call wisdom foolishness.—Euripides, translation by Michael R. Burch

One true friend is worth ten thousand kin.—Euripides, translation by Michael R. Burch

Not to speak one’s mind is slavery.—Euripides, translation by Michael R. Burch

I would rather die standing than kneel, a slave.—Euripides, translation by Michael R. Burch

The Moon

The moon shone bright that night

Beautiful and full.
I can still picture it.
It was magical the way the light danced.
It swallowed every star in the sky
In its majestic glow.

Tonight, however, the moon is gone.
I don’t know where it went.
I wish it would come back
To light up the darkness like it once did
But wherever it’s gone, I hope it’s happier there.

Sparkled Simplicity

I sit in silence as the room fills with people.
People I know and people I've never seen.
My Uncle Mael walking back and forth. As he keeps looking at the doors, we came in.
My Dad whispering to others while they "wailed" as he called it. Although I'm unsure what that means.
My older brother sitting beside me as he keeps looking at me with concern.
This older boy in a white coat. With this sad look on his face as he walks this way.
This lady whose all dressed up in a fancy dress with golden shoes.

Stages of Grief

Stages of Grief
by Joan Leotta

 
The first week
My world is spinning
"That's nothing, the world always spins,"
 they tell me.
"They" always know best.
Their world is fixed
on its axis, firm and sure
Mine has lost its axis,
whirling and twirling
out into space,
out of control.
I am oblivious to all but my loss.
 
Three months after
I am quiet
when I used to laugh
Sad
when I used to be pensive
Still awake

Lonely beach

A day to spend everybody dreams of,
So that they can share there solitude Withof,
But how barely somebody knows,
A beach itself is lonely within its own,
Though we opt it to heal our grief all,
As we feel ourselves there like whole,
That sound of waves is tremendously magically felt,
Like touches our heart in depth,
I am wondering to have my home near there,
But how as beach is lonely which i think is not fair !

Translations Dante - Inferno, Canto XXVI

Florence, rejoice! For thou o'er land and sea
So spread'st thy pinions that the fame of thee
Hath reached no less into the depths of Hell.
So noble were the five I found to dwell
Therein -- thy sons -- whence shame accrues to me
And no great praise is thine; but if it be
That truth unveil in dreamings before dawn,
Then is the vengeful hour not far withdrawn
When Prato shall exult within her walls
To see thy suffering. Whate'er befalls,
Let it come soon, since come it must, for later,


Transit of the Gods

Strange that the self’s continuum should outlast
The Virgin, Aphrodite, and the Mourning Mother,
All loves and griefs, successive deities
That hold their kingdom in the human breast.
Abandoned by the gods, woman with an ageing body
That half remembers the Annunciation
The passion and the travail and the grief
That wore the mask of my humanity,
I marvel at the soul’s indifference.
For in her theatre the play is done,
The tears are shed; the actors, the immortals


Two Sonnets

I

"Why are your songs all wild and bitter sad
As funeral dirges with the orphans' cries?
Each night since first the world was made hath had
A sequent day to laugh it down the skies.
Chant us a glee to make our hearts rejoice,
Or seal in silence this unmanly moan."
My friend, I have no power to rule my voice --
A spirit lifts me where I lie alone,
And thrills me into song by its own laws;
That which I feel, but seldom know, indeed
Tempering the melody it could not cause.


Two Octaves

I

Not by the grief that stuns and overwhelms
All outward recognition of revealed
And righteous omnipresence are the days
Of most of us affrighted and diseased,
But rather by the common snarls of life
That come to test us and to strengthen us
In this the prentice-age of discontent,
Rebelliousness, faint-heartedness, and shame.


II

When through hot fog the fulgid sun looks down
Upon a stagnant earth where listless men
Laboriously dawdle, curse, and sweat,


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