Sappho's Song

By Emmanuel Agrapidis

To lovers everything is love — the faltering voice, the burning blush,
the languid eye — and fainting to a mortal paleness, calling out for love
from a thousand hills and mountaintops they whisper her name,
           changing into swans as they fall…

They call Sappho in that death-defying leap. They sing Sappho
from every marble cliff in Greece: Sappho in dry riverbeds ablaze
with oleander and wild pomegranate, Sappho in olive groves
           and pine-shadowed coves,

Sappho bathing secretly in the ancient calm
of a tide-less sea; on her head a garland of myrtle,
and in her hand a little musical instrument
           of her own invention.