Two Poems
by Jeffrey Burghauser (December 2020)
Sappho Embracing her Lyre, Jules Elie Delaunay, 19th Century
Plectrum
[Sappho] wrote nine books of lyric poetry and invented the plectrum for playing the lyre. —The Suda Lexicon
The spring lamb’s ring
Of viscera was meant
Receptive, soft.
But razor-rent,
Bleached, plaited, prim,
Hard, surfeit-free,
Becomes a sym-
Bol of Intent.
And now, the string
Will happily discard
The music trough’d
And reservoir’d
(For it dislikes
This custody)
When Sappho strikes
Hard against hard.
Prepared to sing,
She, mastering the grand
Precision heft
Of hatred and
Of medicine,
Insults the three
Tons hidden in
A tightened strand.
The offering
She’ll have is not the bed,
Nor the croft
Alive with bread.
“Some paid me love
By giving me
The secrets of
Their works,” she said.
These secrets wing,
And sigh, and glow, and strut.
Maintained aloft,
They’re sickly, but
They’re better than
The poetry
Since secrets can
Be tough as gut.
from Kindertotenlieder[*]
Just before the child died,
He, without a fuss,
Bent to the receding tide
Like Aurelius.—
Just before the child died.
Just before the child died,
Father studied son
With tenacious, frantic-eyed
Stupefaction.—
Just before the child died.
Just before the child died,
God, however (clad
Firewise, bent, Time-astride)
Went completely mad.—
Just before the child died.
[*] “Songs on the Death of Children”
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Amazon, and his website is www.jeffreyburghauser.com.
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