This was in the original Chapbook award manuscript, and it is a poem of mine I have consistently liked. GCM

THEOKRITOS,  flourished 316-260 BCE

IDYLL XXXII

Love forlorn, the late lover’s bloom, Nicias,

You and I know there’s no place in winter for flowers

When nature sleeps or dies, when the hungry search

To find hard bread, and the shepherd

Gives up his limpid songs in the chill air,

Tending in loneliness his sheep at home,

Lying on the summer hay where winter sweeps

The leaves that dance with snow in the cold wind.

I have only once seen such a winter

Which made me love again those mild islands

Whose season is the tracery of clouds

And crisp. Chill waves upon the shore.

Lost love is recalled at the end of year,

And I recall how Galatea teased Polyphemos

With love just out of reach, yet in good view.

The only words he had from her told him

What he already knew, that his one eye

Sat deep in a cave overhung with hairy brow,

And had a body as bulky and rude

As a downhill slide of boulders.

She said he’s misfit to the touch of love.

Yet she would be careless with herself

As with her words, since he knew not how to swim

To her standing in the curling waves.

Remember, Nicias, he vowed when some sailor

Happened by, he would ask him to teach

The art of the waves so he could slide into the sea

And dip dolphin-like out to Galatea.

When that sailor came, something else happened.

All this we know from divine Homer.

(The cyclops’ coarseness was exaggerated; it was

A lie he killed Acis except as an accident.)

Then did Galatea come to show Polyphemos

Care and open up her heart. Too late! Too late!

Once I laughed at your simple, single eye,

And called you a bumbling, clumsy thing.

I judged you harshly, an eye short of two.

But now, my sorrow, you have one eye less

Than sight itself, and cannot see at all!

Now wet streams dull Galatea’s eyes,

She so ruthless to you before,

Who teased to make your sorrow fun, and laughed

At the lonely eye that wept enough tears for two

.Precious now is that lost pearl,

Treasure of brightness so ludicrous then!

Theokritos was born in Syracuse, moving to Alexandria toward the end of Ptolemy Soter’s reign, Alexander’s companion and general, Lagus, the first Macedonian pharaoh. Distinguishing himself as a poet, he gained the patronage of Lagus’ son Ptolemy II Philadelphus (the surname is ironic: he had his two brothers murdered) who intensely developed Greek institutions and culture in Egypt at the expense of the Egyptians. At some time he returned to Sicily. Galatea is a water nymph. She and her lover Acis listened in on Polyphemos’ private love song, and when he heard them laughing, in sudden rage he threw a stone that killed Acis.

The manuscript of this was discovered in the Georgian monastery of Gelati, known for its illuminated manuscripts, during the cataloging of its library in early 1917 by Professor Ekvtime Takaishvili of the University of Tbilisti. In the chaos of the Russian civil war, he packed up a number of manuscripts and emigrated to England with his daughter, and eventually obtained a position at Oxford with the help of Professor E. R. Dodds. Professor Dodds had an interest in the Georgian Neoplatonic philosopher Ioannes Petritzi who had translated some of Proclus’ works. Takaishvili’s daughter returned to the Soviet Union in 1938 with this and most of the other manuscripts Takaishvili brought which the Soviet government had formally asked to be returned. Nothing has ever been heard about the daughter or manuscripts again.