Four Poems, After Sappho

Abstract

Four Poems, After Sappho NINA PICK Some men say an army of horse and some men say an army on foot and some men say an army of ships is the most beautiful thing on the black earth. But I say it is what you love. —Sappho, trans. Anne Carson Phaedra Died of a guilt-love the sweet cherry juice that rots in the womb the chalice of the heart rimmed with salt Some loves fill you gold as a ripe lemon and spill Some empty you down to the hard stone pit A skull with no skin not even teeth. arion 21.2 fall 2013 Blame Aphrodite wrote Sappho—she has nearly killed me with love for that boy. And was the boy, Sappho, still a boy still softfaced, still shy, still limbed at angles like a poem in fragments Did you learn the shielded face of the lotus the dark act of the woman body in desire neither blameless nor immortal four poems, after sappho 132 Iphigenia Promised to a great man she prepares for the wedding. With anxiety and anticipation she prepares her table for his. I’m working the evening shift picking bones out of flesh spooning eyes from their holes scouring the glimmering scales. I thought I’d loosen the form of the body the writhing pink life of it squirming in its beige suit, its fishnet sack. I thought I’d put my fingers in, as one splits an orange and pull it apart Nina Pick 133 When it turns out she’s what’s for dinner she must have laughed who was I kidding thinking I’d marry this man? I tear the threads that knit it together wrest the closed hand open each half-moon of the body dripping and sweet the fish on the plate returned to the water a blood orange the color of blood. four poems, after sappho 134 Other Islands A coming and an uncoming. The gone and the returned. Daria and Dorota and I went down to the water I scooped Dorota from the palm of the twinyoked egg She was the most beautiful and besides I loved her more Nina Pick 135 Pythagoras’ Comma Oona, with her hands in my hair she parts, and combs, and weaves into threes drawing fractions from the glimmering mess. I’m still walking the path of lastnight’s dream alone in a landscape a continuity of loss where there’s two piles of something ontological that should not be in piles heaped like paper cutouts fronds of grass in one is a torn piece of an earlier life, its rough edges, its luminous sky in the other is the yet-to-be born the air between them is a breathless bone-cold longing I curl around it like a snake, coiled, waiting. four poems, after sappho 136 I remember the time I felt God in my body felt a knowing deeper than water in the curve of my belly I raised my hands in the onslaught night, and surrendered to a life of heart-clenching beauty. I was one in a crowd at a rock concert not a church standing in an amphitheater of pines but I might as well have been prone at the feet of the Parthenon bent at the threshold kneeling under the stained glass of a volcano as it swelled and broke over Nina Pick 137 my head. I was bowed like a burst rose a shoot of heat sent forth from the red of the saffron heart. The music cracked open like a wall, drumbeats sparking and descending, and I knew then the place where my name means fire knew the army of men the flood of horses, the field of battle the wolf note the pendulum the octave’s hot blunt point knew the most beautiful thing on the black earth the black earth its black and wild love. four poems, after sappho 138 ...