Nature poems per se are rare in The Greek Anthology. This, one of Meleager’s longer poems, is an attempt at a nature poem, anticipating Virgil. It includes one biological error, the ancient belief that bees spring from rotting cow carcasses. I have done this up in blank verse, and if it mixes a little Shelley in, well, so be it. The Greek word “euoi” is a variant of “evoe” or “evohe” and is a Dionysian cry of rapture.
TO SPRING
Adapted from Meleager, The Greek Anthology, I, 363
The Cynic, too, is happy in springtime.
How could it be otherwise? Departed
the howling winter is, and now the sky
gives way to smiling, purple-flowered days.
Out of dark earth a green garland rises
as dried-up meadows break out in tresses,
willow green-bud, the tender, up-sprouting grass
the emerald hair of the new season.
What had been frost is now the dew of dawn,
laughing as the rose-bud in lurid red
blushes. Shepherds break out their shrill-toned pipes
trimming and tuning them to summon forth
The he- and she-goats and their new-born kids.
Already mariners, by tide and moon
called out, puff up their sails with Zephyr’s help.
Somewhere on distant slopes, the revelers,
heads wreath’d with berry’d ivy cry euoi!
to him who blesses grapes: Dionysus!
An old bull-carcass spews forth the black bees,
decay engendering intelligence
as the swarm swells and divides its labors
as wondrous as the pyramids in Egypt.
those ever-refilling white honeycombs.
Kingfisher and cormorant, the ibis
and crane, stern eagle and high-flying kite —
how all the birds exult and sing, down to
the humblest of sparrow. Swan glides, swallow
flits round to bless the homes of rich and poor.
The mournful nightingale, in gloom of grove,
takes up its station. Dire ravens roost there,
and crowds of crows await the crops to come.
O what a world for those with pinion’d wings!
If there is joy in all green uprising,
if there is joy as gold wheat flourishes,
if there is joy in the flocks’ frolicking,
and in those never-ending Pan-pipe calls,
if there is joy in sailing out to sea,
then somewhere always dances Dionysus.
Birds, bees, the swelling earth, the cloud-blessed sky,
how should a poet not sing of these, too?
Hands joined, come one and all, and dance! Euoi!
