Issue #20 (2011) PDF - myweb - Long Island University

SAPPHO TO THE MAIDENS
What did Sappho teach her girls,
except how to love —Ovid
At first were only Chaos, Earth and Love,
Love, the source of all that came to be,
most beloved of the gods,
longed for, shining, with wings of gold—
I, whom the Muses call sister,
who have drunk deep draughts of Hippocrene‘s
immortal waters,
caressed Pegasus‘s silken mane,
danced with the Graces
among the roses of Pieria,
will teach you hymns in Love‘s praise.
So garland your soft curls
with sweet-scented violets that
charm the Graces to lift their rosy feet,
join us in joyful epithalamia—
sweet marriage songs
pleasing to Aphrodite—
for Song is Love‘s accomplice,
is it not
Yet for all their giddying fragrance,
Pieria‘s roses also have their thorns
whose piercings call up songs
of lamentation. You‘ll also learn
Song‘s paradox,
Love‘s conundrum:
their pain flows from the same
fount as their power.
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