You know how this is: if I look at the crystal moon, at the red branch of the slow autumn at my window, if I touch near the fire the impalpable ash or the wrinkled body of the log, everything carries me to you, as if everything that exists, aromas, light, metals, were little boats that sail toward those isles of yours that wait for me.
Well, now, if little by little you stop loving me I shall stop loving you little by little.
If suddenly you forget me do not look for me, for I shall already have forgotten you.
If you think it long and mad, the wind of banners that passes through my life, and you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots, remember that on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my arms and my roots will set off to seek another land.
But if each day, each hour, you feel that you are destined for me with implacable sweetness, if each day a flower climbs up to your lips to seek me, ah my love, ah my own, in me all that fire is repeated, in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten, my love feeds on your love, beloved, and as long as you live it will be in your arms without leaving mine.
Bird Left Behind by Sophie Cabot Black
As for her, the circumstances must be ordinary And so the return. Door unlocked. The path mowed Right to the oiled gate; the pasture
Cleared of stone and alder. All untouched Enough to enter. The man or woman Off down the valley or working above
Treeline. No other sound but a few strays Hurrying through the dusk as if the end Will begin, certain and with nothing
More to say. She does not know she does not know. Having come back to find her kind And none being left she took herself up
Into a tree unclear what to do next save only Sing the song she wanted sung back to her.
(To an army wife, in Sardis...) by Sappho, translated by Mary Barnard
To an army wife, in Sardis:
Some say a cavalry corps, some infantry, some, again, will maintain that the swift oars
of our fleet are the finest sight on dark earth; but I say that whatever one loves, is.
This is easily proved: did not Helen—she who had scanned the flower of the world’s manhood--
choose as first among men one who laid Troy’s honor in ruin? warped to his will, forgetting
love due her own blood, her own child, she wandered far with him. So Anactoria, although you
being far away forget us, the dear sound of your footstep and light glancing in your eyes
would move me more than glitter of Lydian horse or armored tread of mainland infantry