They should pity her, banished from her shelter.
She has never seen a thing destroyed.
Risen now, scrambling in the fierce air dealt her,
She faints into those years of noise outside.
Where did it come from? she asks, fighting her eyes
Open to the plunging gale of trash.
No single object can she recognize.
No wonder that, so deep within the crash
Of stone and glass, she does not think to query
Herself, and how she might be classified:
A project that could possibly miscarry?
A deathless creature in a life that died?
Sarah Ruden’s translation of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata is available from Hackett.
