SAPPHO: Poetry

A few selections from the Greek poet Sappho (translated by Mary Barnard):


#39 He is more than a hero

He is a god in my eyes—
the man who is allowed
to sit beside you—he
 
who listens intimately
to the sweet murmur of
your voice, the enticing

laughter that makes my own
heart beat fast.  If I meet
you suddenly, I can’t

speak—my tongue is broken;
a thin flame runs under
my skin; seeing nothing,

hearing only my own ears
drumming, I drip with sweat;
trembling shakes my body

and I turn paler than
dry grass.  At such times
death isn’t far from me.


#44 Without warning

as a whirlwind
swoops on an oak
Love shakes my heart.


#45 If you will come

I shall put out
New pillows for
You to rest on.


#65 Persuasion

Aphrodite’s
daughter, you
cheat mortals.


#53 With his venom

Irresistible
and bittersweet

that loosener
of limbs, Love

reptile-like
strikes me down.


#41 To an army wife, in Sardis:

Some say a cavalry corps,
some infantry, some, again,
will maintain that the swift oars

of our fleet are the finest
sight on dark earth; but I say
that whatever one loves, is.

This is easily proved: did
not Helen—she who had scanned
the flower of the world’s manhood—

choose as first among men one
who laid Troy’s honor in ruin?
warped to his will, forgetting

love due her own blood, her own
child, she wandered far from him.
So Anactoria, although you

being far away forget us,
the dear sound of your footstep
and light glancing in your eyes

would move me more than glitter
of Lydian horse or armored
tread of mainland infantry


#84 If you are squeamish

Don’t prod the
beach rubble.


*See Mary Barnard's translations of Sappho's poetry, introduced by Dudley Fitts, published by the University of California Press.

Burning to Learn

Great literary capture of the burning desire to learn?

Don Winslow’s “California Fire and Life”: Chapters 10-15.  

I will excerpt that section for a college class someday.  

When I asked Winslow if he’d mind, he seemed damned delighted.

Robert Graves: The Fires And Falcons of Desire

FIRE WALKER


To be near her is to be near the furnace.
Fortunate boy who could slip idly through,
Basket in hand, culling the red-gold blossom,
Then wander on, untaught that flowers are flame,
With no least smell of scorching on his clothes!
I, at a greater distance, charred to coal,
Earn her reproach for my temerity.




THE FALCON WOMAN


It is hard to be a man
Whose word is his bond
In love with such a woman,


When he builds on a promise
She lightly let fall
In carelessness of spirit.


The more sternly he asks her
To stand by that promise
The faster she flies.


But is it less hard
To be born such a woman
With wings like a falcon
And in carelessness of spirit
To love such a man?


--Robert Graves


Graves is always a good poet for the issues and the textures of desire.


Falcon women and falcon men--or half-falcon folks, even--make love and life harder on their partners and would-be partners.  Warning signs needed?  Would they be heeded, even?

Green's Sappho: Imagination and Desire

It is easy to forget, also, how large a part of any poet's emotional life is conducted in the mind and the imagination --so much more real, for him, than the world of physical appearances, so tangible that he will slide at will from the real to the imaginary until, in the end, there is no clear frontier between them. The passions which stirred me were embodied in this secret world, this dream-dominion of pure, silver-clear, crystalline adoration, so that my creative imagination could dwell on some loved face or body and, in fantasy, find fulfillment there without disturbing the delicate balance of unknowing which governed my conscious thoughts. I burned, yet the fire was contained, transmuted. As I grew older, inevitably, the perilous frontier between desire and knowledge became less distinct; this was the time of nightmare, of knowing-and-not-knowing, when, waking, I closed my eyes deliberately to what my mind understood, but refused to accept. It is not hard to understand, now, that state of latent, unexplored desire which had so instantaneous and devastating effect on Chloe.

--from Peter Green's excellent novel on Sappho: The Laughter of Aphrodite.