Sappho (625 B.C.E.)

BECAUSE YOU LOVE ME

Because you love me
Stand with me face to face
And unveil the softness in your eyes...

               (translated by D. W. Myatt)

BLAME APHRODITE

It's no use
Mother dear, I
can't finish my
weaving
        You may
blame Aphrodite

soft as she is

she has almost
killed me with
love for that boy

               (translated by Mary Barnard)

CLEIS

Sleep, darling
I have a small
daughter called
Cleis, who is
like a golden
flower
        I wouldn't
take all Croesus'
kingdom with love
thrown in, for her

Don't ask me what to wear
I have no embroidered
headband from Sardis to
give you, Cleis, such as
I wore
        and my mother
always said that in her
day a purple ribbon
looped in the hair was thought
to be high style indeed
but we were dark:
                 a girl
whose hair is yellower than
torchlight should wear no
headdress but fresh flowers

               (translated by Mary Barnard)

IT WAS YOU, ATTHIS

It was you, Atthis, who said

"Sappho, if you will not get
up and let us look at you
I shall never love you again!

"Get up, unleash your suppleness,
lift off your Chian nightdress
and, like a lily leaning into

"a spring, bathe in the water.
Cleis is bringing your best
purple frock and the yellow

"tunic down from the clothes chest;
you will have a cloak thrown over
you and flowers crowning your hair...

"Praxinoa, my child, will you please
roast nuts for our breakfast? One
of the gods is being good to us:

"today we are going at last
into Mitylene, our favorite
city, with Sappho, loveliest

"of its women; she will walk
among us like a mother with
all her daughters around her

"when she comes home from exile..."

But you forget everything

               (translated by Mary Barnard)

WE PUT THE URN ABOARD SHIP

We put the urn aboard ship
with this inscription:

This is the dust of little
Timas who unmarried was led
into Persephone's dark bedroom

And she being far from home, girls
her age took new-edged blades
to cut, in mourning for her,
these curls of their soft hair

               (translated by Mary Barnard)


TONIGHT I WATCHED

Tonight I've watched
the moon and then
the Pleiades
go down

The night is now
half-gone; youth
goes; I am

in bed alone

               (translated by Mary Barnard)

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Revised: August 19, 1999