I couldn't pick a favorite poem, though that is one with an inspiring sentiment and something we could do a better job living up to. I'm rather partial to
"Hope" is the thing with feathers,
A Poison Tree, Shakespeare's
Sonnet XXX,
Genie, and
To Hope. I'm also partial to Sappho's Beauty in a Man, which Willis Barnstone translates as
Beauty in a man
A man who is beautiful is beautiful to see
but a good man at once takes on beauty.
This actually puts me in a Sappho mood. Let's look at more!
Another fragmentary poem:
To Eros.
You burn us.
Another:
Shall I?
I don't know what to do
I think yes - and then no.
And
Behind a Laurel Tree
You lay in wait
behind a laurel tree
and everything
was sweeter
women
wandering
I barely heard
darling soul
such as I now am
you came
beautiful
in your garments
Another!
Seizure
To me he seems like a god
the man who sits facing you
and hears you near as you speak
and softly laugh
in a sweet echo that jolts
the heart in my ribs. For now
as I look at you my voice
is empty and
can say nothing as my tongue
cracks and slender fire is quick
under my skin. My eyes are dead
to light, my ears
pound, and sweat pours over me.
I convulse, greener than grass,
and feel my mind slip as I
go close to death,
yet I must suffer all things,
being poor
And:
Supreme Sight on the Black Earth
Some say cavalry and others claim
infantry or a fleet of long oars
is the supreme sight on the black earth.
I say it is
the one you love. And easily proved.
Didn't Helen, who far surpassed all
mortals in beauty, desert the best
of men, her king,
and sail off to Troy and forget
her daughter and her dear parents? Merely
Aphrodite's gaze made her readily bend
and led her far
from her path. These tales remind me now
of Anaktoria who isn't here,
yet I
for one
would rather see her warm supple step
and the sparkle in her face than watch all
the chariots in Lydia and foot soldiers armored
in glittering bronze.
The passion and intensity in Sappho's poetry comes through millennia after it was written. It's wonderfully bracing.
