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HERAKLEITOSThe Extant Fragments translated byGuy DavenportGuy Davenport s most recent book is Tatlin His translations of Archilochus are animportant contribution to American poetry. He is at work on new translations of Anacreonand other Greek poets. This translation appeared in Contemporary Literature inTranslation.

The Logos is eternalbut men have not heard itand men have heard i t and not understood.Through the Logos all things are understoodyet men do not understandas you shall see when you put acts and words to t he tes tI am going to propose:One must talk about everything according to its nature,how it comes to be and how it grows

I t is natural for man to know his own mind an

Sanity is the highest excellence. The skillful mthe truth , knowing how everything is separatebeing.

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The stuif of the psyche is a smokelike substance of thefinest particles that gives rise to llother things; itsparticles are of less mass than any other substance and it isconstantly in motion: only movement can knowmovement.

The stupid are deaf to truth: they hear, but thinwisdom of a perception always applies to someo

Bigotry is the disease of the religious.

The psyche rises as a mist from things that are wet.Many people learn nothing from what they see experience, nor do they understand what they hexplained, but imagine that they have.

The psyche grows accordingto its own law.

A dry psyche is most skilled in intelligence and is brightestin virtue.

If everything were smoke,allperception wouldsmell.

In Hades psyches perceive each other by smell The psyche lusts to e wet [and to die].

The dead body is useless even as manure.A runkman, staggering and mindless, must be led home

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What do they have for intellect,for common sense, whobelieve the myths of the public singers and flock with thecrowd as if public opinion were a teacher, forgetting thatthe many are bad, the few are good [there are many hadpeople, few good ones]?

Asses would rather have hay than gold.

Pigs wash in mud, chickens in dust.

All men are equally mystified by unaccountable evidence,even Homer, wisest of the Greeks. He was mystified bychildren catching lice. He heard them say, What we havefound and caught we throw away; what we have not foundand caught we still have.

The handsomest ape is uglier than the ugliest mwisest man is less wise, less beautiful than a goddistance from ape to man is that from man to go

A boy is to a man as a m n s to a god.Homer should be thrown out of the games and whipped,and Archilochos with him.

To God all is beautiful, good, and as it should bemust see things a s either good or bad.

Good days and bad days, says Heisiod, forgetting tha t alldays a alike.

Having cut, burned, and poisoned the sick, the dthen submits his bill.

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Bow down dead to a livelybow. Wisdom is whole: the knowledgeof howplotted in their courses by ll other thin

The unseen design of things is more harmonious than theseen.

We do not notice how opposing forces agree. Look a t the,bow and the lyre.

Not I but the world says it: ll is one.

Wisdom alone is whole, and is both willing and unwillingto be named Zeus.

od s day night winter summer war pelittle, but disguised in each and known iseparate flavor.

The sun will never change the rhythm odid, the Erinyes, agents of justice, wou

All things eome in seasons.

Even sleeping men are doing the worldhelping it along.