When all the earth is undersea, all of Babel's voices come to silence.

[grammarfight.livejournal.com]

Where grateful goats had grazed along the grass,
the squat sea-lions sprawl and undersea,
the Nereids, amazed, stare hard at cities
and homes and groves; through woodlands, dolphins roam;
they bump against tall branches, knock and shake
oak trees. The wold now swims among the sheep;
the waves bear tawny lions, carry tigers;
the boar is swept along — his lightening force
is useless; and the stag's swift legs can't help;
the bird that searched so long for land where he
might rest, flight-weary, falls into the sea.

—from Allen Mandelbaum's translation of the flood story in Ovid's The Metamorphoses



Where kids had frisked, now seal, walrus, and sea calf lolled.
Nereids swam in wonder through gateways, over towers,
and in and out of the windows of deserted buildings of men.
Dolphins romped in the woods and darted like huge birds
from branch to branch of trees, above which, in the flood,
desperate wolves were swimming alongside helpless sheep.
Lions and tigers, living and dead, drifted at random,
with the swift stags and sturdy boars...all swept away.
From black skies the weary birds, scouting a perch,
fell exhausted at last into that endless sea...

—from David Slavitt's "translated freely" version of the flood story in Ovid's The Metamorphoses


cross-posted at grammarfight

Comments

[doozerloover.livejournal.com]

I love Mandelbaum's translation of The Metamorphoses, and I think even in this small selection you can see how much more poetic his version is than others.