Oh darling child I loved too well for happiness,
your enemies will kill you and leave your mother forlorn.
Your own father’s nobility, where others found
protection, means your murder now.

I lived
never thinking the baby I had was born for butchery
by Greeks, but for lordship over all Asia’s pride of earth.
Poor child, are you crying too? Do you know what they
will do to you? Your fingers clutch my dress. What use
to nestle like a young bird under the mother’s wing?

Yours the sick leap head-downward from the height, the fall
where none have pity, and the spirit crushed out in death.
O last and loveliest embrace of all, O child’s
sweet fragrant body. Vanity in the end. I nursed
for nothing the swaddled baby at this mother’s breast;
in vain the wrack of labor pains and the long suffering.
Now once again, and never after this, come close
to your mother, lean against my breast and wind your arms
around my arms and put your lips against my lips.