When dawn, wearing golden sandals, awoke me,
I began to crawl, burning, shivering, to my uncurtained window;
Migrating birds streamed over the dark sea.
 
Who can quench the ingenious fires of cruelty?
I was dreaming of white-fetlocked horses conferring in a meadow
When dawn, wearing golden sandals, awoke me.
 
On my stopped loom, a sort of landscape: icy
Peaks, serrated as daggers; a corpse, and beside it a crow,
And migrating birds streaming over the dark sea.
 
Fat, autumnal flies alight on my sheets, rainbow-hued, dizzy;
This one on my wrist–its mandibles quiver, its gibbous eyes glow…
Then dawn, wearing golden sandals, awoke me.
 
Merciless daughter of Zeus, immortal Aphrodite,
Come to me, sing to me, low-voiced, in sorrow
Of migrating birds that stream over the dark sea.
 
Cast aside your spangled headband: in my mirror I see
You beneath these stringy locks, puckered lips, and tearstained cheeks… go,
Migrating birds, stream over the dark sea;
And dawn, wearing golden sandals, awake me.