Thursday, May 11, 2006

I am alone in the house and it is completely quiet, can you hear it?

stars around the beautiful moon
hide back their luminous form
whenever all full she shines
on earth

silvery.

Sappho

I would write in Greek if my computer knew how. Parts of me are in grief and I rather be in Greek. As you age there is so much more to regret. I hate the bumper sticker that says “regret nothing”-- it is such bullshit.

Yesterday my x-husband called to tell me there was a raccoon INSIDE the new old house; I think I heard it the day before and thought it was a spirit.

I need to read more Sappho and less Celan. I need to stay away from Russian poets for at least one summer. I need to go camping and climb trees, wake up to the cold, write poems by the fire. I want to spend my Fridays at Al’s and Bookhouse.

Tomorrow I will be silvery.
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1 comment:

Lyle Daggett said...

Fridays at Al's and the Bookhouse -- ah, the memories...

Of the Sappho translations I've seen, the ones I've like best generally are by Diane Rayor, in the book "Sappho's Lyre," an anthology Rayor edited of ancient Greek lyric poets and specifically including several ancient Greek women poets rarely translated. (The book was published by U. of California Press sometime in the early '90's.)

I like it in particular because, of the translations I've read, Rayor seems to meddle the least with what the original Greek says.

Likewise about that "regret nothing" bumper sticker -- a Bush Republican notion if there ever was one. You've probably heard the old cliche expression "youth is wasted on the young." I think the opposite is true -- old age is wasted on the old.

5:30 PM

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