Tristia Poem by Ponç Pons

In the final world of Tomis,
covered in foreign earth,
lying in an anonymous tomb
buffeted by the saline wind,
you are still living on perhaps
in the memory of those
bygone enamoured women
and we sing to you, old poets,
lyrical like me who
quietly ripen my verses
and in Romance lament the pain
of our uncertain life.
Time that demolishes all,
consolidates your prestige
and makes your peerless name
ineffaceable for evermore.
But now classic, myth,
lover of love, not even sex
endures and futile is
the faded laurel, fame.
We are all seed of oblivion.
The sharp draught that consumes
notes, folders and books
steeps everything in salt.
Being happy is plagiary,
writing a bitter duty.
We do not live, the words
undo us, making of us
feverish seekers of beauty,
the lost prisoners of a page.
We are wrecked on scribbles.
On Olympus, pure ossuary
of chestnut trees and clouds
kissed by the warm Greek sun,
the gods too have died.
All sent up in smoke,
Ovid, nothing left eternal now.

Translation from Catalan by Julie Wark