The first woman poet Lesbos, the great Greek island opposite Asia, 2,500 years ago…

From that time, from that island, we possess a treasure of radiant beauty and, more charged with emotion still than the most admirable object of marble or ceramic: some 650 lines, with cries of love, revolt and anguish, springing for the first time from a Greek mouth — and this mouth was that of a woman: Sappho.

But with the passage of time, her work has come to represent, even her name alone — the very existence of her work being generally ignored — the pernicious, and for some fascinating, mystery of forbidden love.

But she, the woman, the poet, where is she? Who is she? With her works torn to shreads, scattered and buried deep in the sands, in the night of Egyptian tombs, she was deprived of her poems, divested of all historical reality — modern authors have treated her as an imaginary poet born of legend.

But a journey or 2,500 years through works and arts, through customs and ideas, reveals that her glory was dazzling and she was the first modern poet.

Baudelaire certainly sensed it, although he knew only a few of her verses, and in welcoming her into the garden of his Fleurs du Mal did not wish to separate the lover from the poet. Despite the admiration that the ancients had for her, it is only in our time that Sappho can perhaps be completely understood.

It is not only the fragmentary form of her work which contributes to giving her the face of a modern poet. Even in their original state, the poems by the woman who really invented personal poetry were very short, between four and thirty lines and no one else in Greece was to follow this path which seemed too narrow for those used to epics, great odes or tragedies.

In this wonderful world of ancient literature, Sappho was the only feminine voice, the only vision of a woman thrown into the ancient world that we know only through men.

But by a strange coincidence this woman is a rebel; she says no! No to men who refuse women the right to love. No to the democratic tyranny which was to destroy the aristocratic society in which she was a leading figure (and it exiled her!) and no again, sometimes to the gods.

Sappho was finally the first in an often tragic line of people accused in the trials that morality imposes on genius. She was, in her works, burned and broken, as according to legend, Orpheus has been. But if one can tear to pieces the work of a poet as one can the body of a god, one cannot kill her voice.

Is it going to “save nations or people”? We have no way of knowing for sure, but probably not. Will it save yourself, the writer, - to live and breathe and write and believe in a better world - one more day? Well, that’s what it does for me. And if you find it does that for you, then continue. Not for us, your readers. For yourself, the writer.I, too, feel as if I must do something.

But every tragedy evokes this feeling. It is the magnitude of this one - the shear horror of the insensitivity and power of nature - that makes the pain of this one so much more intense. Sometimes we do appear to be useless. But remember the effect of the single butterfly … we cannot know all that we do. We cannot believe it is more than it is, but we cannot discount that it is something to someone. Hang in there, stratos. (Would’ve sent this via email, but I can’t find your address anywhere.)

it was just between
the first and second snooze
you know
those ten short minutes
and it was mostly green
with red
which blotted itself
into shades of pink
vulva pink
with slithers of lilac

im sure it was a thought
not just
the inside of my eyelids
which are mostly grey
with that annoying little
floater bloater
the sky was bright
for five am
but then
its almost may

dont rush this piece
take time
climb inside my head
and let the thought
caress the bristles
of your brush
stroke the circles
delicately
but those jagged little
edges - slam them hard
splattered
brittle shards
of bluey, purpley black

this thought is elusive
please convey this
in your work
perhaps some oils
will nestle in the valleys
between your fingers
underneath your nails
scratch them against the canvas
like the jagged edges
where the dream was broken
and the thought began
these will be green
like last years foliage
mature

lastly
love this thought
read these words
as you stroke the thought
into life
and dont -
dont forget the vein
of victorious purple
riding the curve
centred
in the pulse
where the thought
began.

sk 04