The moon repeats
a tender footed dance
across a blossoming sea.

 

Dedicating her reflection
of meticulous brush strokes.
She wanders, heavy, quenched.

 

Her paint spreads thick on the salt.

 

I lie alone.
The life we shared
breathed out.
There will be no gentle memory of her…


Sources

1) Trans of fragment of Sappho (Lodel-Page i.a. 16 / Diehl 93 / Cox 50)

2) Sapppho, The Moon is Down. Trans. A.S. Kline, 2005

3) Manchester City Art Gallery’s description of Charles Auguste Mengin’s painting Portrait of Sappho, which contains an excerpt from Thomas Moore’s Evenings in Greece.

4) Sappho, Anactoria. Trans. M. Barnard

5) Sappho, Fragments, on the Muses (part I) Trans. A.J.Kline 2005

 

 

                                                                                                         ~Winston Plowes

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