“You’re so sweet,” she said and I saw myself mirrored in her eyes. And it occurred to me that Alcaeus and I would never again be able to exchange notes, those hasty, affectionate scribbles. Would he ever again dictate his bawdy poems, lampoon dictators and brag about war? Had pen and desk become his enemies?
Many things occurred to me, there on the sand, as Atthis and I talked softly.
Sappho’s garden, terraces of roses, shrubbery and cypress,
has the ocean below: moonlit, she stands white-robed
close to marble statuary:
a nude Hermes, a bust of Aphrodite,
a niobe, an athlete from Delphi.
Sappho sits down on a bench and fingers a lyre.
Mytilene