Derek Mahon: A Night with Cynthia

Length / Form Ten-line stanzas, laid out on the page in imitation of the elegiac meter (with alternate lines indented).

Allusion to Classical figure Cynthia, Roman dead

Allusion to Classical place Actium

Relationship to Classical text The Introduction to Raw Material, an extension of the earlier collection Adaptations (Oldcastle: The Gallery Press, 2006), makes it explicit that these new poems are versions or adaptations of the source text, rather than literal translations. Mahon omits Propertius' mythological references, e.g. to Paris and Helen.

Close translation of words/phrases/excerpts  The poem is a version of Propertius' Elegies II, 15

Classical/post-Classical intertexts "Gather the roses while the roses last" is a diversion from the Latin source, which recalls the Horatian carpe diem sentiment of Robert Herrick's "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may" (In his poem 'To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time' (Hesperides, 1648) Ezra Pound translates the same elegy in his Homage to Sextus Propertius, VII (published in Poetry 13.6, 1919, p.291-299)), but Mahon's version bears little resemblance.

Comment The Sextus and Cynthia poems were first published in a limited edition (Oldcastle: The Gallery Press, 2009).