poems from the book

Goodbye

I just want to die. I just do.
She left me here in tears.

She said a lot, and she said this,
“We’ve suffered so much, Sappho,
it amazes me, and it scares me,
what they’ve done to us. Sappho, you know
I never wanted to leave.”

All I could say back was, “Go,
and try to be happy.
Remember me, remember
how good it was for us,
how fine and how right,

“and let me remember the way
you made me crowns of flowers,
violets, roses and crocus,

“the way you wove garlands of many a blossom,
how gently you set them on my neck,

“how richly you would anoint me
with myrrh, royally costly,

“how you alone, how completely
you satisfied all my desires
on the soft splendid quilts
you spread for me on your bed.”

Artemis

But Artemis abjured father Zeus,
making him swear a tremendous oath,
calling as witness the Styx,
whose bare name
the very gods shudder to utter—
made him swear by the river of death,
into which all things, even the gods,
will at last dissolve,

“Vow to me, father,
on pain of forfeiting
your own immortal existence,
vow I’m allowed to remain
eternally virgin,
untamed, never subjected
to man in marriage
which breaks a woman’s spirit
as a plough-beast is broken to serve.

“Give me to be independent forever,
lone as only a hunter can be,
sole roving the hilltops,
in the unalloyed joy
of solitary pursuits,
the whole world unshared and her own.

“Grant what I ask, all-father,
nod now in sign of grace granted,
incline your almighty head
at which the sky mutters thunder
and shaken earth trembles assent.”

He did so at her asking,
father of the gods—
the gods, who alone are happy here
in this world, he granted her wish,
he let her become
Artemis the huntress,
herself as wild and free
as any beast of prey.

Gods and humans address her,
now and forever,
by the great names of Virgin and Huntress
and Slayer of Deer, she,
from the love that makes women weaklings
forever exempt.