LXVIII THE HEART
Mitchell S. (Mitchell Starrett) Buck translation
BREATHLESS, I take her hand and apply it forcibly to the moist skin of my left breast. And I turn my head here and there and I move my lips without speaking.
My excited heart, abrupt and hard, beats and beats in my breast as an imprisoned satyr would knock, imprisoned in a leathern bottle. She says to me: “Thy heart makes thee ill....”
“O Mnasidika,” I respond, “the heart of a woman is not there. That is only a poor bird, a dove which stirs its feeble wings. The heart of a woman is more terrible.
“Like a little myrtle berry, it burns with a red flame and under an abundant foam. It is there that I feel myself bitten by voracious Aphrodite.”