Prayer to Diana

Ovid's Fasti, the Matronalia — the festival of 1 March, when Roman mothers went to the temple of Juno Lucina on the Esquiline.

Two lines, and both are an instruction as to what exactly is to be said: "Say: 'you gave us light, Lucina'; say: 'you attend the vow of the woman in labour'." The poet does not pray himself but dictates the words to a chorus.

The device is the same as Virgil's in ceres-001: the prayer is presented not as speech but as a direction for speaking it. The Fasti are built as a calendar with instructions, and the rite in them is always someone else's, shown from outside.

And lucem … dedisti means in Latin at once "you caused to be born" and "you brought out into the light of day". In Russian one has to choose.