My favourite book of poetry is Mary Barnard's 1958 translation of Sappho's verses. Nobody really knows much about Sappho, but scholars agree that she was a 7th century Greek lyricist and a woman. She may have been a mother; she may have run an academy of sorts for girl disciples; she may have been a priestess of Aphrodite. It is fashionable today to insist that she was a lesbian, but I resist slapping Sappho with such labels. She wrote,Of course I love you
But if you love me,
marry a young woman!
I couldn't stand it
to live with a young
man, I being older.
I have two Asian students now, and I learn so much from them about the beauty of words. Today I sat across from a gentle Asian nun in a grey habit as she slowly and carefully read from the slim orange book I gave her:
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
It seems astonishing that such an ancient and enduring poet was a woman. And yet there it is, her voice sounding through twenty-six centuries and the carefully chosen English words of a woman translator:
I have no complaint
Prosperity that
the golden Muses
gave me was no
delusion: dead, I
won't be forgotten.
