A scholar's poem

All the shining perfumes I splashed on my head,
And all the fragrant flowers I wore,
Soon lost their scent.
Everything I put between my teeth
And dropped into my ungrateful belly
Was gone by morning.
The only things I can keep
Came in through my ears.


Callimachus ca. 310-240 BC
In Pure Pagan: Seven Centuries of Greek Poems and Fragments, selected and tranlated by Burton Raffel.