SAPPHIC I
This full moon night
Under immense sky
Your darling soul
Diaphanous, quite.
~jwl
https://www.jonwarrenlentz.com
©®™
2009-1127 & 2019-0303
SAPPHIC II
Half moon above,
neither black
nor white –
My distant love
estranged in the night,
neither right nor wrong.
Not wrong, not right –
All night long,
beyond dawn …
Still, I feel
her,
shimmering
light.
~jwl
https://www.jonwarrenlentz.com
©®™
2009-1125 & 2019-0303
SAPPHO
971 Fr. Adesp. (P.M.G.)
Now sets the moon, the Pleiades,
the middle night comes round,
hours
& alone I lie down
~jwl
https://www.jonwarrenlentz.com
©®™
2011-062 & 2019-0303
POSTEA LESBIA
— from Catullus #31 & Sappho #51
Hers is a beauty more than beauty
and she is far more than lucky—
A goddess she is in my eyes—
The woman allowed to abscond with you—
You, leaving
these waters to well
within me, me who lonely moments ago
considered once again myself lucky
sitting beside you:
Where do you go?
Somewhere she listens intimately
to the sweet murmur
of your voice, laughter
that entices my own heart
beyond its accoustomed beating— Listen,
If I meet you again,
expectant, but unexpectedly;
I shan’t speak—
My tongue is broken: Suddenly
when I see you
a thin flame under
my skin runs; I am cast blindess,
and doubly hear my ears drumming only.
Cold sweat and trembling
shakes my body, crying—
and I turn paler
than summer’s grass.
Such times,
death
feels not distant.
~jwl
https://www.jonwarrenlentz.com
©®™
1979 & 2019