3b & 26

Alcman

3b

Her sweetness isn't empty:

Astymeloisa is coy
and quiet. She lifts
the garland high
like a star that falls
from burning sky,
like an incandescent
branch, or goose down
soft and fluttering:

her glance melts
limbs like desire,
her glance dissolves
like sleep or death.





26

I'll never dance again
with sweet-voiced girls:
my knees just shake
underneath me.

If only I were a cerylus,
gliding with halcyons
that teem above waves'
white-blossomed spray—

strong ocean-purple bird,
your heart never shakes
underneath you.


translated from the Ancient Greek by M. Pfaff



Read the original in Ancient Greek

Listen to '3b' read in the Ancient Greek by M. Pfaff

Read translator’s note

Alcman is one of the earliest recorded representatives of the Greek lyric poets. Tradition holds that he was a Spartan slave, freed because of his skill in composing choral poems.

M. Pfaff is a doctoral candidate in Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan. He is currently dissertating on the presence and function of Greek and Latin in American experimental poetry.


The poems of Alcman exist in varying states of decay: the few that are nearly complete, or complete enough to get a sufficient sense of the original poem or some significant portion of it; complete stanzas, not enough to get a sense of the whole poem, but a stanza complete in itself, often quoted in an external ancient source; longer fragmentary pieces, often from preserved papyrus manuscripts; shorter fragments; a single line or word. The fragmentary nature of the remnants poses peculiar challenges and offers up peculiar joys to the translator.