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The Horses of Achilles: In Memory of  EDMUND KEELEY

2/23/2022

3 Comments

 
​“Mike” Keeley, as we all called him, died this morning,  February 22, 2022.  I miss him beyond words and so can only say what Homer envisioned, Cavafy gave voice to, and Mike translated:
  
The Horses of Achilles
  
When they saw Patroklos dead --
so brave and strong, so young--
the horses of Achilles began to weep;
 their immortal nature was upset deeply
 by this work of death they had to look at.
They reared their heads, tossed their long manes,
 beat the ground with their hooves, and mourned
 Patroklos, seeing him lifeless, destroyed,
 now mere flesh only, his spirit gone, defenseless, without breath,
turned back from life to the great Nothingness.
 
Zeus saw the tears of those immortal horses and felt sorry.
 “At the wedding of Peleus,” he said,
 “I should not have acted so thoughtlessly. Better if we hadn’t given you as a gift,
my unhappy horses. What business did you have down there,
 among pathetic human beings, the toys of fate. You are free of death, you will not get old,
yet ephemeral disasters torment you.
Men have caught you up in their misery.”
But it was for the eternal disaster of death
 that those two gallant horses shed their tears. 
3 Comments
Dan Caner
2/24/2022 11:27:30 am

I owe a lot to Keeley. His course on modern Greek poetry in fall of 1985 was among those I most enjoyed at Princeton, and a major reason I worked in Greece after graduating. I still have the books from that class - now looking at my copy of his translations of Sikelianos, I see the corrections he made to some of the lines as we discussed them. A warm, concerned scholar, who took real interest in his students.

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Froma Zeitlin
3/1/2022 04:38:46 pm

Such a wonderful poem and so fitting for our dear Mike, who was always gracious, king, and lover of all things Hellenic, Sorry not to have replied sooner to thank you for posting

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john Immerwahr
3/6/2022 11:52:27 am

I never really noticed this passage -- what an amazing piece of poetry and beautifully translated. Thanks for sharing it with us.

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