Mimnermus 2

Mimnermus 2.

full translation: and we, like the leaves which the many-flowered season of spring produces, as soon as it grows in the sun's rays -- like to them we delight for a short time in the flowers of youth, knowing neither good nor evil from the gods. But black Banes stand beside us, one having the end of grievous old age, the other of death. And the fruit of youth is short, as much as the sun scatters on the ground. But whenever that end of time passes by, at once it is better to die than life. For many evils come about in the soul. At one time the livelihood is consumed, and poverty's jobs are painful. Another in turn lacks children, and wanting them most of all he goes under ground into Hades. Another has soul-destroying disease. But there is nobody whom Zeus does not give many evils

• I think I noted before that I think there might be an intertext with this poem in Herodotus. Solon's speech to Croesus has an idea pretty similar to Mimnermus, with similar language: αὐτίκα δὴ τεθνάναι βέλτιον ἢ βίοτος (Mimnermus 2.10) vs. ἄμεινον εἴη ἀνθρώπῳ τεθνάναι μᾶλλον ἢ ζώειν (Hdt. 1.31.3). I wonder if there is some complicated game with Mimnermus here -- the actual Solon apparently engaged with Mimnermus' thoughts on aging.
• in general the poem reminds me a lot of Semonides 1: grim statements about the human condition, with a catalogue of deaths in the second half of the poem
• Repeated sun imagery for youth -- youth as a time of sunshine, in contrast to the dark ("black" μέλαιναι) banes of death and old age.
  
• Love the image of "knowing neither good nor evil from the gods" -- the meaning is ambiguous, I think, but I like the idea that youthful innocence takes the form of ignorance, even of good.