What Atalanta Does Not Know: Metamorphoses 10.636-37
dixerat, utque rudis primoque Cupidine tacta,
quod facit, ignorans amat et non sentit amorem.
What Atalanta Does Not Know: A Translation, Metamorphoses 10.636-37
is this thing that makes her feel like an unpolished stone, like
the marble underneath a red canvas that borrows its blush as the
light bleeds through. She knows but does not know that this
brilliant transaction is longing, the sort that hollows you out
until you can be filled by another.
About the Translator
CB Brady is a writer and translator from Hawaii, based in the Bay Area. He writes poetry about dead things, especially languages. He produced a limited-run podcast about the crossroads of classical and American pop culture. He writes about comics and movies.
About the Author
Ovid is a 1st century Roman poet, whose main claim to fame is that he wrote such a raunchy pick up guide, the Ars Amatoria, that the emperor exiled him from Rome to the Black Sea. He spent his exile being sad and writing upstanding poetry like the Fasti, about religious holidays, and the Tristia, about how sad he was, in the futile hope that he would be allowed to come back to Rome.