Fragment Forty-one ... thou flittest to Andromeda. SAPPHO

AM I blind alas, am I blind? I too have followed her path. I too have bent at her feet. I too have wakened to pluck amaranth in the straight shaft, amaranth purple in the cup, scorched at the edge to white. Am I blind? am I the less ready for her sacrifice? am I the less eager to give what she asks, she the shameless and radiant? Am I quite lost, I towering above you and her glance, walking with swifter pace, with clearer sight, with intensity beside which you two are as spent ash? Nay, I give back to the goddess the gift she tendered me in a moment of great bounty. I return it. I lay it again on the white slab of her house, the beauty she cast out one moment, careless. Nor do I cry out: “why did I stoop? why did I turn aside one moment from the rocks marking the sea-path? Aphrodite, shameless and radiant, have pity, turn, answer us.” Ah no—though I stumble toward her altar-step, though my flesh is scorched and rent, shattered, cut apart, slashed open; though my heels press my own wet life black, dark to purple, on the smooth, rose-streaked threshold of her pavement.

AM I blind alas, deaf too that my ears lost all this? nay, O my lover, shameless and still radiant, I tell you this: I was not asleep, I did not lie asleep on those hot rocks while you waited. I was not unaware when I glanced out toward the sea watching the purple ships. I was not blind when I turned. I was not indifferent when I strayed aside or loitered as we three went or seemed to turn a moment from the path for that same amaranth. I was not dull and dead when I fell back on our couch at night. I was not indifferent when I turned and lay quiet. I was not dead in my sleep.

Lady of all beauty, I give you this: say I have offered small sacrifice, say I am unworthy your touch, but say not: “she turned to some cold, calm god, silent, pitiful, in preference.” Lady of all beauty, I give you this: say not: “she deserted my altar-step, the fire on my white hearth was too great, she fell back at my first glance.” Lady, radiant and shameless, I have brought small wreaths, (they were a child’s gift,) I have offered myrrh-leaf, crisp lentisk, I have laid rose-petal and white rock-rose from the beach. But I give now a greater, I give life and spirit with this. I render a grace no one has dared to speak, lest men at your altar greet him as slave, callous to your art; I dare more than the singer offering her lute, the girl her stained veils, the woman her swathes of birth, or pencil and chalk, mirror and unguent box. I offer more than the lad singing at your steps, praise of himself, his mirror his friend’s face, more than any girl, I offer you this: (grant only strength that I withdraw not my gift,) I give you my praise and this: the love of my lover for his mistress.