Best Euripides Poems
“He is not a lover who does not love forever.” - Euripides
I savor each tender kiss from your lips
Your touch stirs great ardor within my heart
Grateful for time spent when we're together
Our lucent love shines despite an eclipse
United as one 'til death we must part
Two hearts are joined without rings to tether
You are my life, beloved destiny
Eyes aflame with desire, your arms outstretched
Through joys and hardships, we walk hand in hand
Great lovers, we are now and forever
Visions of you, in my mind has been etched
Like footprints, together pressed in beach sand
Not washed away by tides; no, my love ~ never
Faithful now, and throughout eternity
Waiting in line,
Before the ATM of closed banks for 60 Euros to withdraw under the scourging sun
Old and invalid people are submitted to this daily torture, constantly moaning, for Our country’s suffering and for our own devastation,
While twenty-seven percent the unemployment has climbed
Forty percent the salaries and pensions went down and twenty percent the taxes up
Rendering hundreds of thousands of families poor with no money to feed themselves And their children
When
Close to one hundred thousand of our countrymen have attempted suicide of whom Ten thousand, unfortunately, have succeeded in ending their lives only in five years Because of the ruinous austerity measures taken to pay Greece's lenders
Parthenon, is mourning Democracy's assassination in the place of its birth
By the mighty creditors that suck the blood out of our veins
The Greek government in agony has turn to our allies for help to restore our Economy and thus to prevent the catastrophe that is approaching,
But the creditors, most of them anyway, with Germany leading the way,
To obliterate Greece wish with their unbearable and inhuman terms they have set
As though were our enemies and not our partners, because
Humanity has been lost in their hearts and only for them the profit counts
And I, one of the suffering Greeks, that shares the same lot as any,
In anxiety, a few words try to arrange for the tragedy of Greece to illustrate as a New Euripides or Sophocles but to no avail,
So I am waiting in line under the scourging sun, hoping my turn to come,
The sixty Euros, if am lucky, to get into my hands before the AMT is empty!
© Demetrios Trifiatis
15 JULY 2015
Sleep our glorious ancestors, sleep!
Do not be disturbed.
We,
your descendants would never betray
The blood you have shed to liberate
Our land.
The Land of:
Homer and Hesiod
Aeschylus and Euripides
Socrates and Plato
Hypocrates and Alexander
For
We would never let another enemy,
No matter how powerful,
To invade our holy motherland-
The birthplace:
Of Philosophy
Of Democracy,
Of Tragedy, and
Of the Olympic Games.
Sleep you, immortal heroes of freedom, sleep!
Let your blessed souls roam onto the Elysian fields, and
Let yourselves enjoy the company of our
Forbears:
Of Hercules,
Of Achilles
Of Odysseus, and
Of Agamemnon
For
We stay vigilant guards instead of you
Ready to safeguard the values and ideals
For which you have fallen.
Ready to follow your footsteps, and
Ready to die for our land: Greece
Which
You have liberated after four hundred years of
Insufferable and tyrannical occupation.*
©Demetrios Trifiatis
25 March 2021
*The Ottomans captured Constantinople (Istanbul), which was
the capital of the Byzantine empire for eleven centuries, on the
29th of May 1453. Greece remained enslaved till the 25th of
March 1821, when we Greeks revolted against the oppressors' tyranny and after a long war, we managed to liberate ourselves!
Long live Freedom. Long Live Greece!
Navigating the immense void of night
The right ascension to a winter’s sky;
Coincides with the height from which I stood
Stars, interlinking crescendo’s so freely,
Imitate the centuries, as I presumed as much.
At least with one tuned in, to so many stars
The magnitude existence found, far large;
Appearing close to one another as a variable
Heralded each, a legend the Greeks had made.
(The Constellations)
Snoozing with the intention of inanimate usage
The head long bolster pillow, namely, ‘Hydra’,
Chose an encounter with Hercules as foe
Prolong impetuous, to each gradual hemisphere,
As one could sideways look, exclaim its’ breath
Pursuing each as on-lookers, chose that group!
Individually did it taper each ceaseless path.
Warily, with twisting motion, a scathing attack
Searching menageries from whence it came;
To the labyrinths where pulsars engage sense
Trails to adjoining torsos, and ten thousand heads,
Though be them stars or for the sheer hell of it
Combine as one, each with a will of its own;
As per chance, with the combined effort, sway
Euripides, a watercourse, with banks on each.
There, Centaurus takes grip of its south west tip
Uninspiring Sextans, via Alphard’s luminary
The heart to all there is, and everlasting life,
Immortality may be a reality or mere illusion.
Secondments trail to endearments out of view,
To Southern scopes from omnipotent fathers;
Godly endeavours that imaginations flame
Find these dreams for us, the Hydra dead,
To remain in searing portals to then regroup
Bestowed as thoughts to future centuries.
This modern social scene has overhung-
Encompassed by a twirl, one single snake
That twisted and turned where each was caught
By something that as groups could never see,
We as the stars ourselves imposing on each
Imposing one another, avoiding calm.
This meandering replacement deals with hope,
Extremely drawn out as the Hydra is;
To engulf every membrane of tale told so far,
Where mass of spatial existence seems blood
From which taking blame its life’s loss came,
And every impending story told so far,
Was simply a daydream to a night time sky.
Papa said my beauty would make life better
For marry I must this summer
Or we shall continue to suffer.
Bride Price shall make my family richer.
But I am in a dilemma.
Sam is sweet but Jude is Richer
Papa would welcome either,
For Marry I must this summer
Faithful Jude adores me better.
Sam’s ego burns like fire
And this makes me bitter.
Sweet Jude stalks me like a beggar,
Wicked Sam is not much of a love giver,
And Marry I must this summer.
Alas! I know not why I love Sam better.
Maybe Sweet Jude is too much of a Lover,
Maybe Sam appears to be the worthier,
For he frets not about my beautiful aura
And is sanctified with the Ego of a deserving lover,
Sam I must marry this summer.
QUOTATION
When love is in excess it brings a man no honor nor worthiness.
Euripides, Medea, 431 B.C.
Greek tragic dramatist (484 BC - 406 BC)
Hippolytus and Phaedra In Declining Orbits
Hippolytus and Phaedra, a Euripides sad story
Phaedra wants sex with Hippolytus, (her step-son)
She tries every trick in the book for her own glory
Hippolytus, illegitimate son of Theseus, (king of Athens)
Phaedra, his wife was not very nice
Theseus wants his son dead for what he tried to do
Hippolytus, (sworn to chastity) plus, he wants men
Unjustly charged for compromising Phaedra
Banished by his dad
Died slowly from injuries brought on
In a bad decision
Incurred by a chariot collision
Phaedra orbits in another world, from another planet
She hanged herself, which brought attempted incest to an end
Hippolytus travels in his own universe, he too is dead
Jump Through A Rope
Ropes may be used to jump through;
After you have done more than a few,
Faster and faster;
A major disaster;
Will become tired like most people do.
Jim Horn
Not Freeze and Comfortable Breeze
Euripides please warm things up and not freeze,
And even exacerbate warm comfortable breeze;
With weather great,
Now and not late,
That everyone does love and with always agree.
Delude and Not Collude
What we should do is be sure to never collude,
And if we did and were to delightfully delude;
Not create chaos,
Or being big boss;
While we create peace and stop having a feud.
Jim Horn
Run Over In a Stampede
Awesome poem that I love to read;
Everyone else they all have agreed;
Reached the end;
Rules did bend;
Was run over by horses in a stampede.
Jim Horn
Tingling of tongue sent Euripides
Questing a tastier kind of cheese.
"I found cheddar magical,"
Said this poet tragical,
"Sailing the southern antipodes.”
To Flower
by Michael R. Burch
When Pentheus ["grief'] went into the mountains in the garb of the baccae, his mother [Agave] and the other maenads, possessed by Dionysus, tore him apart (Euripides, Bacchae; Apollodorus 3.5.2; Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.511-733; Hyginus, Fabulae 184). The agave dies as soon as it blooms; the moonflower, or night-blooming cereus, is a desert plant of similar fate.
We are not long for this earth, I know—
you and I, all our petals incurled,
till a night of pale brilliance, moonflower aglow.
Is there love anywhere in this strange world?
The Agave knows best when it's time to die
and rages to life with such rapturous leaves
her name means Illustrious. Each hour more high,
she claws toward heaven, for, if she believes
in love at all, she has left it behind
to flower, to flower. When darkness falls
she wilts down to meet it, where something crawls:
beheaded, bewildered. And since love is blind,
she never adored it, nor watches it go.
Can we be as she is, moonflower aglow?
Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea
Aeschylus: "Agamemnon"
A man in exile
Feeds himself on barren hope
Yields to fate in time
Aeschylus: "Prometheus Unbound"
Life's hard lesson
Wrong is shameful in the old
Time instructs us all
Sophocles: "Philoctetes"
Words not deeds rule men
Shaped to meet the moment's need
Waging war with fate
Sophocles: "Antigone"
Courage to choose right
And 'gainst harsh reality
Make no compromise
Aristophanes: "Lysistrata"
Poet's plea for peace
Fair breezes speed us onward
Making love not war
Euripides: "Alcestis"
Time will console you
Walk to the end of old age
The dead are nothing
These are nature poems about unusual plants like the moonflower and agave.
Moonflower
by Michael R. Burch
after Robert Hayden
Marveling,
we at last beheld the achieved flower—
both awed and repelled by its alienness,
its moonlit petals,
its cloying fragrance,
its transcendence,
its shimmering and wavering intimations of mortality ...
To Flower
by Michael R. Burch
We are not long for this earth, I know—
you and I, all our petals incurled,
till a night of pale brilliance, moonflower aglow.
Is there love anywhere in this strange world?
The agave knows best when it’s time to die
and rages to life with such rapturous leaves
her name means Illustrious. Each hour more high,
she claws toward heaven, for, if she believes
in love at all, she has left it behind
to flower, to flower. When darkness falls
she wilts down to meet it, where something crawls:
beheaded, bewildered. And since love is blind,
she never adored it, nor watches it go.
Can we be as she is, moonflower aglow?
When Pentheus [“grief’] went into the mountains in the garb of the bacchae, his mother [Agave] and the other maenads, possessed by Dionysus, tore him apart (Euripides, Bacchae; Apollodorus 3.5.2; Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.511-733; Hyginus, Fabulae 184). The agave dies as soon as it blooms; the moonflower, or night-blooming cereus, is a desert plant of similar fate.
Our English Rose
by Michael R. Burch
for my mother Christine Ena Burch
The rose is?
the ornament of the earth,
the glory of nature,
the archetype of the flowers,
the blush of the meadows,
a lightning flash of beauty.
This is my translation/interpretation of a Sappho epigram.
Keywords/Tags: nature, moonflower, agave, flower, petals, rose, earth, beauty, beautiful, night, mortality
These are epigrams by Michael R. Burch
Road to Recovery
by Michael R. Burch
It’s time to get up and at ’em
and out of this rut that I’m sat in.
A man may attempt to burnish pure gold, but who can think to improve on his mother?—Mahatma Gandhi, translation by Michael R. Burch
A mother's heart is God's ultimate masterpiece.—St. Therese of Lisieux, translation by Michael R. Burch
Fools call wisdom foolishness.—Euripides, translation by Michael R. Burch
My objective is not to side with the majority, but to avoid the ranks of the insane.—Marcus Aurelius, translation by Michael R. Burch
I discovered the Goddess in your body's curves and crevasses.—attributed to Sappho, translation by Michael R. Burch
Warmthless beauty attracts but does not engage us; it floats like hookless bait.—Capito, translation by Michael R. Burch
Experience is the best teacher but a hard taskmaster.—Michael R. Burch
Time will tell, as it always does in the end.—Michael R. Burch
Time flies, until it's flown.—Michael R. Burch
How can the Bible be "infallible" when from beginning to end it commands and condones but never once condemns the satanic institution of slavery?—Michael R. Burch
Atheists give God the "benefit of the doubt."—Michael R. Burch
The enemy is not without, but within our gates; it is with our own complacence, our own folly, our own cutthroats and criminals that we must contend. — Cicero, translation by Michael R. Burch
Let me bend the world to my will
though it resist still.
—Michael R. Burch
Keywords/Tags: epigrams, road, recovery, rut, Sappho, goddess, beauty, wisdom, mother, god, teacher, time, bible
O that god would change me to a sea-bird,
soaring in the sunset,
joyously and free,
leaving all my sorrow
for my own tomorrow,
far beyond this lying world’s illusion.
I would fly away to that bright garden
past the ocean’s ending,
where eternity
nourishes the flowers
through their perfect hours
never touched by human life’s confusion.
To fly away, away, away, away, away on wings of wishing,
where the golden apples swell in ripeness,
and the fertile meadows
bloom abundantly,
bringing forth earth’s treasures
for the deathless pleasures
granted to the gods in calm profusion.
-- translated from the Greek
Eros, Eros, sweetly despoiling
human hearts with your passionate fire,
never, never may you invade me
with so destructive a flood of desire.
Mightier, mightier than any gleaming
starlight endlessly piercing night’s radiance,
stronger than torches that paint the dark with flame,
flies the fatal shaft of the Love God,
child of all-seeing Zeus on Olympus
and Aphrodite: it strikes with deadly aim.
Vainly, vainly famous Olympia
and Delphi’s holy oracular shrine
richly, richly garner their harvest
of sacrifice and libations of wine:
O my country, why do you never
make oblation in honor of Eros,
born of the Love Queen to rule the minds of all?
Eros, guardian of Aphrodite’s
sacred chamber is mightier than armies:
he is the conqueror whose power makes cities fall.
Aphrodite kindled in Helen
a passion stronger than duty or shame:
Priam’s city, ancient and splendid,
is nothing now but a song and a name.
Death and terror, fire and destruction
blossomed forth from her heartbreaking loveliness,
leaving Troy’s citadel ashes soaked with blood.
Dreadful, dreadful comes Aphrodite,
whirling all in her devastating hurricane,
quick as a honeybee that seeks a springtime bud.
Translated from the Greek by Jon Corelis
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Today’s blessing is a thought
Euripides first designed…
and is an important lesson
for future generations to keep in mind…
To all those people who are wanting
To make their country great:
When one with honeyed words
But evil mind
Persuades the mob…
Great woes
Befall the state.