The Elegies of Maximianus: A Selection

Abstract

The Elegies of Maximianus: A Selection A. M. JUSTER From Elegy I Time rolling on disturbs and drags with it all things, and no one is allowed to run a settled route. (110) Since now for me a long old age is harsh and futile, since I can live no longer, let me die. O how life’s brutal contract burdens wretched men! Death does not acquiesce to human will. Death’s sweet for wretches, but when welcome death retreats, and when it’s sad, it comes all in a rush. Alas, with me long truly dead in many parts, it’s clear I’ll enter hellish roads alive. Now with less taste, less hearing, even eyes are fogging; I barely can discern what’s real by touch. (120) No scent is sweet, no pleasure gratifying now. Without the senses who would think one goes on? Look! Lethean amnesia steals upon my mind; bewildered now, it can’t recall itself. It does not rise for work while flesh is languishing and muddles on, intent on its misfortunes. I’ll sing no songs; my greatest joy, reciting, flees, and the true charm of words is vanishing. arion 23.1 spring/summer 2015 I don’t disturb the courts; I don’t write fawning poems. I don’t pursue awards with savage lawsuits, (130) and even my own once-loved looks abandon me, and I appear to be a ghostly figure. In place of red and snowy-white, a sallowness and deathly bloodless color stain my face. Skin shrivels dry, tight muscles stiffen everywhere, and clawlike hands keep scratching itchy limbs. Now, with a never-ending stream, once-laughing eyes bemoan their punishment through night and day, and where a welcome wreath of brows was covering, a drooping thatch harasses from above (140) and shrouds them as if they were closed in some dark cave. Alas, they witness something grim and frenzied! An old man is a fright to witness, and you doubt a man who lacks his faculties is human. If I revisit books, their letters split in pairs; for me familiar writing seems much larger. It seems that I detect a brilliant light through haze; the clouds themselves are clear inside my eyes. The day is seized without death. Who in grimy gloom denies his jailing in a hellish place? (150) What expert is so mad he would convince a man that in his prayer he wants to be more loathsome? the elegies of maximianus: a selection 80 Elegy II Behold the gorgeous Lycoris, too loved by me, with whom my world was one, my soul as well. After the many years that we had lived together, alas, dismayed, she kissed off my embrace and now is chasing new young men and new desires; she’s calling me “a gutless, weak old man” and wishes to forget the sweetness of past life— not, rather, that she left me, an old man. Indeed, ungrateful and untrue, she makes up claims so she can judge rejection is my fault. (10) By chance not long ago she saw me passing by; while clothing covered up her mouth, she spat. She said, “I liked him? Did he love me during sex? Damn it! I often gave him tender kisses? She’s nauseous and she spews “past love” as if it’s vomit; she lays a slew of curses on my head. See what long life now brings: that she could think to screw a person whom she previously loved. Wouldn’t it have been better to succumb right then, when I was—rightfully—despised by no one, (20) than, after any charm had perished that once was, to live on dead with merited indictments? All that we lived is nothing; at the final hour time passing drags off everything with it, A. M. Juster 81 and yet, as snowy hair envelops her with age, and time now stains her face with deep blue marks, she stands out even now, and to herself she looks so precious, and resents her years with me, and, I concede, a trace of youthful shape endures and fire stays preserved within her ash. (30) Indeed, years, I observe you...