(Less Partial and More Total Shades of Green)
3. Tuesday October 31st Lesbos
The island’s thermal springs are to be found
on the shores of the large bay
a short taxi ride to the west of Mitilini.
A plain single story building encloses the issues of the waters, the entrance fee is affordable, and local custom and modesty requires that men and women divide to enter the pools in separate chambers, naked, young and old alike, the steaming mineral waters and …
HE SEEMS TO ME EQUAL TO THE GODS THAT MAN
WHOEVER HE IS WHO OPPOSITE YOU
SITS AND LISTENS CLOSE
TO YOUR SWEET SPEAKING
–
AND LOVELY LAUGHING- OH IT
PUTS THE HEART IN MY CHEST ON WINGS
FOR WHEN I LOOK AT YOU, EVEN A MOMENT, NO SPEAKING
IS LEFT IN ME
–
NO: TONGUE BREAKS AND THIN
FIRE IS RACING UNDER SKIN
AND IN EYES NO SIGHT AND DRUMMING
FILLS EARS
–
AND COLD SWEAT HOLDS ME AND SHAKING
GRIPS ME ALL, GREENER THEN THE GRASS
I AM AND DEAD – OR ALMOST
I SEEM TO ME.
–
BUT ALL IS TO BE DARED, BECAUSE EVEN A PERSON OF POVERTY
Where Sappho wrote this her Fragment 31 is not known – and I found it harder than expected to learn by heart the lines of this translation (by Anne Carson) for a small public performance, only the last lines of the 4th verse remained fixed in memory – with any certainty.
—
4. Monday November 6th Purchase and Reading of the Green Book
Totality is why the poetry of Sappho can be linked to the Third Universal Theory of Muammmar Al Gathafi, Libya’s leader, and living among those who are “totalled” is a risky business.
Two days before there had been storms at sea and we had had to shelter in the port of Al Khoum
mmj