Prevod

She gave her warning and, with swans yoked to her chariot, made her way through the air; but courage defies all warnings. By chance the hounds, following an unfailing trail, roused a boar from its lair, and as it made to leave the woods, the young son of Cinyras struck it with a glancing spear. At once it shook the weapon from its curving snout, stained with its own blood, and as the trembling youth sought safety, the savage boar pursued him, buried its tusks to their full length deep in his groin, and stretched him dying on the tawny sand.

Borne through the open air in her light chariot, Cytherea had not yet reached Cyprus on her swans’ wings when she recognized from afar the dying youth’s groan and turned her white birds toward it. When from high in heaven she saw his breathless body writhing in its own blood, she leapt down, tore her robe and tore her hair, and beat with her palms her breast, which deserved no such blows.

And railing at the Fates, she said, “Yet not everything shall lie within your power. The memorials of my grief shall endure forever, Adonis, and the image of your death, renewed each year, shall reenact my lamentation. But your blood shall turn into a flower. Were you once allowed, Persephone, to change a woman’s limbs into fragrant mint, while I must be begrudged the power to transform the son of Cinyras?” So saying, she sprinkled his blood with fragrant nectar; at its touch the blood swelled, just as a translucent bubble rises from tawny mud. No more than a full hour had passed when a flower sprang from the blood, of the same hue

as those borne by pomegranates, which hide their seeds beneath a pliant rind. Yet its beauty is short-lived: for, clinging weakly and so light that it falls easily, it is shaken loose by the very winds that give it its name.”