These are poems about EROS and CUPID, the ancient Greek and Roman gods of erotic love, respectively. However, many ancient poets were not exactly fans...
I should have previously posted Patricia's original poem. But here it is -- late but still worthy:
PREPOSTEROUS EROS
Beware! for love is captious and unkind
And knows no order to his mighty sway.
Refuse him and no refuge will you find;
Desire him and he soon will turn away.
Take care! For love can turn you upside-down,
Can turn you wrongside-round and inside-out.
He turns the wisest man into a clown
And clown to wise man, there is little doubt.
I dare to claim that love is an ingrate
So love and I do not see eye to eye.
You give love everything you have — and wait!
Your darling laughs but you, my friend, will cry.
My honesty will pain romantic youth
Yet love is ever careless with the truth.
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Her poem has a playfulness and graceful good humor that places it solidly among the lighter elements of Greek and Latin erotic elegy and epigram. I only regret i didn't post the entire poem with my original comment. What a dullard I can be!
Sappho's 54 is just brilliant, suggesting so much sexually while saying so little. I'm tempted to say that this is an erotic little masterpiece because it's certainly the right way to write the erotic very well. Excellent translation by one who knows the true power of Sappho's smallest fragments.
I was delighted to find Patricia Falanga's Preposterous Eros in your selection. Patricia is a fine poetess from down under whose work, graceful, plain-spoken, deserves to be better known up here. She is a skilled poet, musician, songwriter, and scholar of languages whose work i am fortunate to have read.
I should have previously posted Patricia's original poem. But here it is -- late but still worthy:
PREPOSTEROUS EROS
Beware! for love is captious and unkind
And knows no order to his mighty sway.
Refuse him and no refuge will you find;
Desire him and he soon will turn away.
Take care! For love can turn you upside-down,
Can turn you wrongside-round and inside-out.
He turns the wisest man into a clown
And clown to wise man, there is little doubt.
I dare to claim that love is an ingrate
So love and I do not see eye to eye.
You give love everything you have — and wait!
Your darling laughs but you, my friend, will cry.
My honesty will pain romantic youth
Yet love is ever careless with the truth.
-------
Her poem has a playfulness and graceful good humor that places it solidly among the lighter elements of Greek and Latin erotic elegy and epigram. I only regret i didn't post the entire poem with my original comment. What a dullard I can be!
Thanks for posting the poem and clearing things up!
Sappho's 54 is just brilliant, suggesting so much sexually while saying so little. I'm tempted to say that this is an erotic little masterpiece because it's certainly the right way to write the erotic very well. Excellent translation by one who knows the true power of Sappho's smallest fragments.
I was delighted to find Patricia Falanga's Preposterous Eros in your selection. Patricia is a fine poetess from down under whose work, graceful, plain-spoken, deserves to be better known up here. She is a skilled poet, musician, songwriter, and scholar of languages whose work i am fortunate to have read.
I wrote the poem, taking the title from one of Patricia's poems.
I agree with all you said about her.