Scratching the 17-Year Poetic Itch

The song of the cicadas has inspired poets through the centuries, from the ancient Greek Meleager to Lisa Bankert of Kensington. Bob Dylan wrote a whole song about the bugs (which he dubbed "locusts") after their hum nearly drowned out a Princeton University ceremony in which he received an honorary degree.

The Cricket to the Cicada

Meleager

(Greece, circa 100 B.C.)

O resonant cicada, drunk on dewy droplets.

You sing your rustic song that sounds in lonely places.

Perched with your saw-like limbs, high up among the leaves

You shrill forth the lyre's tune with your sun-darkened body.

But, dear friend, sound forth something new for the woodland nymphs,

A divertissement, chirping a tune for

Pan as the song which you sing in your turn,

So that I, escaping from Eros, can catch some noon-time sleep

While reclining there under the shady plane tree.

Translated by Rory B. Egan, University of Manitoba