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Cloud Cuckoo Land by Antonius Diogenes, Folio Ξ

Folios from the second half of the Diogenes codex are considerably more deteriorated than the first, and the gaps in the manuscript present significant challenges for both translator and reader. Folio Ξ has been at least sixty percent effaced. Illegible portions are indicated by ellipses and conjectural representations are delivered inside brackets. Translation by Zeno Ninis.

… In the Pleiades I saw a nation of swans eating bright fruits, and on the far shores of the Sun I drank from ·[a river of steaming wine]·, though it singed my beak. I visited a thousand strange lands but never did I find one where tortoises carried honeycakes on their backs and war was unknown and suffering unheard of.

… from these Icarian heights, my feathers powdered with the dust of the stars, I saw the earth far below as it really was, a little mud-heap in a great vastness, its kingdoms only cobwebs, its armies only crumbs.

… I ·[glimpsed?]· a distant glow, a golden filigree of towers, the puff of clouds, just as I envisioned that day in the square in Arkadia…

… except that it was grander, more ravishing, more heavenly…

… ringed by falcons, redshanks, quails, moorhens, and cuckoos…

… hyacinth and laurel, phlox and apple, gardenia and sweet alyssum…

… delirious with joy, weary as the world, I dropped…