“i hear the sound of a gentle word / on the wind that lifts her perfume through the air”

For Poetry Monday:

“Didyme has captured me with her eyes,” Asclepiades, tr. Lawrence Benn

Didyme has captured me with her eyes,
Alas! And I melt like wax before a flame
When I behold her beauty.
And if she’s black, so what?
Coals are too, and yet when we heat them
They glow like rose petals.


Original. Asclepiades of Samos, who flourished in the 3rd century BCE, was a pioneer of the erotic Hellenistic epigram. Although Didyme was a common name for Egyptian women, white classical scholars have debated for centuries, sometimes huffily, just how literally he meant that “black” (μέλας). That aside, this is somewhat free rendering, especially that first line—here’s the relevant lexicon entry for θαλλός (the second word) and a limply prosy but more literal version from 1916 by W.R. Patton:

Didyme by the branch she waved at me has carried me clean away, alas! and looking on her beauty, I melt like wax before the fire. And if she is dusky, what is that to me? So are the coals, but when we light them, they shine as bright as roses.

---L.

Subject quote from Good Vibrations, The Beach Boys.