New Lines On Aging

Lines from a new Sappho poem - 2004 Cologne - 2005 Britain -

Martin West's translation appearing in the Times Literary Supplement

[but my once tender] body old age now
[has seized;] my hair’s turned [white] instead of dark;
Lachlan MacKinnon's version acknowledging West's rendering and appearing under the title "Sappho to Her Pupils" in Small Hours ...
Old age freezes my body, once so lithe,
rinses the darkness from my hair, now white.
I like the particularity of the verb "rinse". It gives a sense of time passing and washing away. Startling also is the agency of old age.

And so for day 1131
17.01.2010