Poets Translate Poets: A Hudson Review Anthology (18 page)

ey cool their souls off for

One week full of hard work.

Th

ey beat an infernal rhythm

Until their canes split;

Ears at the front of the house

Take no account of it

But in the back are wailing,

Torn by punch and by thump,

Th

e runners, the Persian pillows,

Th

e eiderdown, German and plump.

Lore Segal and W. D. Snodgrass, 1961

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Er ich K ä stner
(1899–1974)

Autobiography

For those who weren’t born, it’s all the same.

Th

ey perch above some tree in Space and smile.

Myself, I never thought of it. I came,

A nine-months child.

I spent the best part of my life in school,

Cramming my brain till I forgot each word.

I grew into a highly polished, model fool.

How did it happen? I really never heard.

Th

e war came next (it cut off our vacation).

I trotted with the fi eld artillery now.

We bled the world to ease its circulation.

I kept on living. Please don’t ask me how.

Infl ation then, and Leipzig, and a whirl

Of Kant and Gothic and Bureaucracy,

Of art and politics and pretty girls,

And Sundays it was raining steadily.

At present I am roughly 31,

And run a little poem factory.

Alas, the greying of my hair’s begun,

My friends are growing fat remorselessly.

I plop between two chairs, if that’s appealing,

Or else I saw the bough on which we sit.

I wander down the garden-walks of feeling

(When feelings die) and plant them with my wit.

I drag my bags around despite the pain.

Th

e bags expand. My shoulders grow unsure.

E r ic h K ä s t n e r
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In retrospect, permit me to explain:

Th

at I was born. And came. And still endure.

Jerome Dennis Rothenberg, 1958

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A n c i e n t G r e e k

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Hom er
(ca. Twelft h Century b.c.)

Helen on the Walls

Th

e Iliad, iii, 121–242

Now to Helen of the white arms came a messenger, Iris,

disguised in the form of her sister by marriage, Laodike,

loveliest of the daughters of Priam, whom Helikaon wed,

the strong son of Antenor. And she found her in her rooms,

weaving with crimson cloth a great web that folded double,

in which she was working the tale of the numberless struggles

between Trojans, tamers of horses, and the bronze-clad Achaians,

all they had suff ered for her at the bitter hands of Ares.

And Iris the quick-footed came, and stood beside her, and said:

“Come with me, dear girl, and see the wonder that has happened.

For those who once were at war, each man against the other

struggling in the plain, and whose only lust was for killing,

now sit in a sudden silence, and a lull has come in the war,

and they rest upon their shields and the tall spears are stuck

in the ground beside them. For now in a duel of single spears,

Alexander and brave Menelaos will fi ght together for you,

and you shall be the wife of the man who wins in the fi ghting.”

So she spoke, and awoke a passion of longing in Helen,

sweet desire for the husband she had before, for her home

and her parents. Over her head she drew a veil of shimmering cloth,

and the tears stood in her eyes as she quickly went from her room;

but not alone, for two serving-girls went with her—

Aithre, daughter of Pittheus, and Klymene with gentle eyes

like the gentle eyes of cattle. And these three went swift ly down

toward the Skaian gates.

Now Priam was already there, and with him

were Panthios and Th

myoites, Lampos and Klytios,

Hiketaion, descended of Ares, Antenor and Oukalegon,

men of perceptive advice and the elders of the people,

Hom e r
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whom age had retired from war, but excellent speakers still,

with voices clear and fi ne, like the voices of cicadas

who sing in the trees of the forest, and its fi neness trembles the air

like the whiteness of a lily. Such were they, the leaders of Troy,

who sat upon the tower.

But when they saw Helen ascending,

the old men murmured together and spoke their wingèd words:

“Surely no blame can touch either the men of Troy or Achaia,

because they suff er so long for the sake of a woman like this,

whose face, in its terrible beauty, is like the face of a goddess.

But goddess though she be, let her go away in the ships

and not remain in this land, a curse to us and our children.”

So the old men murmured, but Priam called out to Helen:

“Come here, dear child, beside me. Sit here and now look down

on the husband you had before and your former friends and your people.

In my eyes you are blameless; the gods, I say, are guilty

who drove upon me this bitter war with the men of Achaia.

But enough, and now tell me the name of that magnifi cent man.

Who is that man, so majestic among the Achaians?

He stands shorter by a head than most of the other fi ghters,

but never before have my eyes seen any man so noble,

so splendid or royal as this. Yes, he stands like a king.”

And Helen, the glory of womankind, answered the king:

“Dearest father, never have I failed in the respect and fear

I owe you. But now I wish that I had died by my own hand

on that day when I came with your son across the sea in his ship,

leaving my home behind me, and my growing child, and my friends,

the lovely friends of my girlhood. But it has not happened that way,

and now I am worn with remorse. But this is my answer to you:

that man is the son of Atreus, powerful Agamemnon,

a king but also a fi ghter, a brave and an able spearsman,

and once my kinsman too—though who could believe that now,

whore that I am?

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So she spoke, and the king marvelled at Agamemnon

and exclaimed:

“Happy son of Atreus, favored of fortune,

how many men of Achaia stand mustered beneath your sway!

Long ago I journeyed to Phrygia with its lovely vineyards

and saw the Phrygian people in their wealth of horses assembled,

and all the gathered people of Otreus and Mygdon the godlike

who had pitched his camp beside the riverbanks of Sangarios.

For I too had come as an ally and was mustered among them

on the day when the Amazon women, the peers of men, rode in.

But even they were not so many as all these quick-eyed Achaians.”

Th

en, seeing Odysseus next, the old man questioned Helen:

“But tell me, dear child, who is that man I see there,

shorter by a head than Atreus’ son Agamemnon,

but broader still in his build, across the chest and the shoulders?

His weapons lie on the ground, there in the fertile pasture,

but he moves himself like a ram along the lines of his soldiers.

Yes, to some great ram with shaggy fl eece would I compare him

as he moves majestic among the ranks of resplendent sheep.”

And the lady Helen, descended of Zeus, replied to the king:

“Th

at is the son of Laertes, Odysseus, a shrewd man and cunning,

in Ithaka born and raised, in a poor and a rocky place,

but he is expert in craft and a master of every deception.”

But now Antenor, a man of perceptive advice, broke in:

“Lady, what you say is the truth and also shrewdly spoken.

For once before now Odysseus and bold Menelaos

came here to Troy together on an embassy for you,

and I feasted them both in my house and made them welcome as friends,

and learned what each man was like, and shared their intimate thoughts.

Now when the Trojans assembled and these two men were compared,

Menelaos, standing, was the larger man in the shoulders,

but Odysseus the lordlier man when both of them were seated.

But when they rose to weave their words before us in council,

Hom e r
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Menelaos spoke little, a few words and rapidly spoken,

but still extremely lucid, for he was sparing of speech

and his tongue never wandered, although he was the younger man.

But when the shrewd, the cunning Odysseus rose to speak,

he stood there stockstill, his eyes staring at his feet,

and made no gestures with his staff , pushing it to and fro,

but held it graceless and rigid, as a clumsy man might do.

You would have said he was stupid or sullen, and an oaf as well,

but when he started to speak, and the great voice swept from his chest

and the words came driving hard and fast like the winter snows,

then no other man on earth could hold his own against him.

And aft er we heard him speak, his clumsiness seemed to vanish.”

But now, seeing Ajax next, the old man Priam asked her:

“Who is that other Achaian, that huge and massive man

looming above them all by the bulk of his head and shoulders?”

And Helen in shimmering robes, the glory of women, replied:

“Th

at is Ajax the great, the bulwark of all the Achaians.

And behind him stands Idomeneus, like a god among the Cretans,

and those are the lords of Crete, the men in a group around him.

Many times, I remember, Menelaos feasted him

at our house in Sparta when he crossed the sea from Crete.

And now I see them all, all the quick-eyed men of Achaia,

the men whom I know so well and whose names I could tell you;

but nowhere do I see those two, the shepherds of the people,

Kastor, tamer of horses, and the boxer, brave Polydeukes—

my own brothers, for we were born of a single mother.

Either they have stayed at home in Lakedaimon the lovely,

or came with their men to Troy across the sea in their ships,

but refuse to enter the fi ghting along with the other men,

in fear of the shame and the bitter reproaches upon me.”

So she spoke, but the fertile earth lay on them already,

there in Lakedaimon, in the beloved land of their fathers.

William Arrowsmith, 1962

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From
Th

e Odyssey

Book 11, lines 1–137

Now when we had gone down again to the sea and our vessel,

fi rst of all we dragged the ship down into the bright water,

and in the black hull set the mast in place, and set sails,

and took the sheep and walked them aboard, and ourselves also

embarked, but sorrowful, and weeping big tears. Circe

of the lovely hair, the dread goddess who talks with mortals,

sent us an excellent companion, a following wind, fi lling

the sails, to carry from astern the ship with the dark prow.

We ourselves, over all the ship making fast the running gear,

sat still, and let the wind and the steersman hold her steady.

All day long her sails were fi lled as she went through the water, and the sun set, and all the journeying-ways were darkened.

She made the limit, which is of the deep-running Ocean.

Th

ere lie the community and city of Kimmerian people,

hidden in fog and cloud, nor does Helios, the radiant

sun, ever break through the dark, to illuminate them with his shining,

neither when he climbs up into the starry heaven,

nor when he wheels to return again from heaven to earth,

but always a glum night is spread over wretched mortals.

Making this point, we ran the ship ashore, and took out

the sheep, and ourselves walked along by the stream of the Ocean

until we came to that place of which Circe had spoken.

Th

ere Perimedes and Eurylochos held the victims

fast, and I, drawing from beside my thigh my sharp sword,

dug a pit, of about a cubit in each direction,

and poured it full of drink-off erings for all the dead, fi rst

honey mixed with milk, and the second pouring was sweet wine,

and the third, water, and over it all I sprinkled white barley.

I promised many times to the strengthless heads of the perished

dead, that, returning to Ithaka, I would slaughter a barren

cow, my best, in my palace, and pile the pyre with treasures,