excerpts

To you I am descending, oh you, deluded souls!

To set your gall a-seething—you, minds like fumaroles—

                                    I’m carrying a curse;

My curse is misanthropic, with purple, claw-like hand—

With this I stamp your foreheads, instead of cattlebrand:

                                    A stigma, if not worse.

Although I know my lyre is doomed to sound in vain

Around your fuddled reason, soaked in the vices’ rain

                                    And spurred by passions’ shove,

Around your fuddled reason, which orgies caused to sink,

From many frenzies rotten—now parched by too much drink

                                    And drained of ardent love.

…

What can I ever winnow from your exhausted wight?

No fire free from dying, no undeceiving right,

                                    Oh, youngmen, dead-alive!

How could I praise your courage when it’s displayed in furies,

In heaps of bottles broken with noisy shameless houries

                                    Whom orgies cause to thrive?

1869

English version by Andrei BANTAŞ