CRAFTSMAN OF WINE BOWLS
On this wine bowl, made of pure silver
for the house of Heracleidis,
where excellent taste reigns—
look, here are elegant flowers and streams and thyme,
and in the middle I placed a beautiful young man,
naked, erotic; he still has one of his calves
in the water—. I prayed, Oh Memory,
to find you as my best helper, so that I might make
the face of the young man I loved as it was.
It was very difficult though as it has been
almost fifteen years since the day
he fell, a soldier, in the defeat at Magnesia.
Manolis 