from L'Etat Belge (2000)
Ballade of Boys from Days Gone By
Tell me, where now is noble Alcibiades
he who once drove wild with love Plato, Socrates
Aristotle and all those other great philosophers?
tell me, where is his brother in the lists of love
he for whom Shakespeare created many a verse?
and where now are the lads whom Michael Angelo
found so beautiful he made them into statues
bent to his will in attitudes of tortured slaves?
where are they now, all those nameless adolescents?
Their beauty endured for only one brief summer
Where now is the divinest boy AntinoĆ¼s
whose image was immortalised by Yourcenar
bringing back to life the Emperor Hadrian?
he was swept away from the riverbanks of Nile
for in order to preserve the flower of his youth
he had dared to challenge dying’s dread arcana
men are still bewailing his miserable fate
while Hadrian, consumed by grieving at his loss
tried to console himself with thousands of his busts –
his beauty endured for only one brief summer
Where now are the darling sons of the Renaissance
whose long limbs were revealingly moulded under
form-fitting hose? and where are those page boys who once
made Henry the Third faint clean away with rapture?
and all those gold-embroidered equerries are they
not dead? I am afraid that their delicious flesh
is now compounded with the worm-infested clay
despite the pleasures they may have enjoyed on earth
their beauty endured for only one brief summer
O all you fine young lads from those days long gone by
will you ever listen when tears are being shed
by one who faces now the plunge into the depths
of that dark trap where you are eaten by the worms?
He, too, once believed he would escape that fate – but
his beauty lasted only for one brief summer
Translated by James Kirkup
Page(s) 38-39
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The