**. TO HEPHAESTUS (8 lines)

(ll. 1-7) Sing, clear-voiced Muses, of Hephaestus famed for
inventions.  With bright-eyed Athene he taught men glorious gifts
throughout the world, -- men who before used to dwell in caves in
the mountains like wild beasts.  But now that they have learned
crafts through Hephaestus the famed worker, easily they live a
peaceful life in their own houses the whole year round.


(l. 8) Be gracious, Hephaestus, and grant me success and
prosperity!

Solent in Expiationem Animarum

Saint John the Apostle says: “Zefián, the computer of the Duoverse of the Verthian world, indicates the order of his creation of the world, according to the transcendental plant living matter, in the interstices of time itself that exists within sidereal time. Noting that matter and time, is governed by all mythological beings in a compartment with monotheism, will be defined by atavistic laws, which are the deity of the intense hiding place of procreation, endowing great contextual residences, for habitat and a world in which larger non-residential scales, which go from passerby between the lines of time, and cosmological phenomena, which in the Duoverse face vicissitudes of the stars and their physicality added to the arcs of memory and emotions. Thus the main task of how the structure of experience surpasses consciousness, to novelize the orthogonal movements of the Universe, but in a Vernarthian world with great explorations of matter, which are quantified and volatilized in the field of its ethereal existence. The laws will be governed by your Zefian computer, describing codes that will verify the fulfillment of pivots in the reactions of the universe, but with refractions when reasoning about the consummate phenomenon. Starting from here in the experienced biology that will overcome the laws of physics, since its value is above the limits that allow the bold line of gravity that bounces in the lines of time, and its distances promoting more discretion when resisting threats. of a possible tiring case, a product of some relative dominance not included in all worlds with each other, in some case that does not rescue us from loss of links of some omitted sidereal reminiscence, attracting us to a universe governed by hemicycles of merely material particles, and not existential biological ones. The dimensions emerge from the beginning of the same universe, but more delayed from the interval and the second limit of the space that rests, to inaugurate the one that comes. Being the orbit of translation twice rotating towards the sun, but nth times rotating on itself, to go out to another stellar dimension not present. Its geometry will be from the intendancy of the resumption of Cinnabar in Tsambika and Helleniká, to later cancel each other out, making their integration in Patmos, on the coast of Skalá, with curvatures that validate the nullity of successive expirations of material lives, between spiritual expirations alive.


Duoverso is born and will be reborn, every time the years are subject to the loss of everything quantifiable and not, under the light that will be lit on all the darkness, Zefián being, in paronymy in which they lack to appropriate the support and merit of to have it absorbed in the tabernacle of Vas Auric, in the privilege of nothingness itself and nobody, adding itself in what is preserved of the physical support of itself. For just sidereal speed, in which it will have to travel on its same axis of rotating time on itself, in paradoxical of the One-dimensional Beams, these coexisting with the same low and high universes, reconverted into angelic vital luminances, creating orbits and optics in the visions of Christian temporality. By empowering them to enable them in the overexcited that derive disorders of intermittency of memory and physics of time, to reinsert themselves in the sequence that inhabits the residual of the speed of the Beam, as a Theo-Philosophical entity, of cellular multiplicity or cells of seasonality. of retrograde times, for the independence of temporality, under the regime of the past made up of an unbelievable yesterday. Overcoming the conserved immediacy of conviction in the One-dimensional Beams (Kafersesuh), it is observed denser when every mortal admits to being due to integrating and later brooding, dissecting organic matter into inorganic matter, suspended in the richness of a world of Faith and Prayer, of the most anti-gregarious desert and lost in the world, but supported by hollow walls, which do not exist in Vernarthian emotional matter.

The movements being physical, they take us on conjectured layers to discern their magnitude, emphasizing the rigor of their measurement on us, instead, the ambivalence of Zefian, delivers in both chromatic the Dark and White Duoverse, under the reference of the behavioral alternations of the Diospyros, source of the arboreal, for the procreation granted in the hands of Leiak. Relying on this equational exercise, with less time to design for its genealogy, but rather on its apocalypse, reinstalled in abolished primary unknown spaces, to have it once again in the light of consciousness, recognized as an inert matter of the past, but living off the immanent eternity of nebulae that personalize the earring of the Caltrop, taking temporality, but not snatching any hand to tear it from his own.

Vernarth says: “In the rhetoric of the Universe-Duoverse theorem, it is worth noting the past with entity, present and future also, connected to the time of Verthian inspiration, Holderlin-Heidegger, on issues of physical habitability, as a complement to the entity, which anticipates the present/future in the vicinity of death in the past and future, but tangentially in lively whims of existentialism-mortality, for a way of being rented out at death, as a way of being, dwelling in death itself and in the act of embodiment having existed, but with its own mandate after having been rented. The Vernarthian World appears in this current, prolonging existence from non-existence, granting complementarity of more past existence, before an unlived death. Ontologically, This theory stems from the One-Dimensional Beams of Kafersesuh, in Ein Karem. Essentially Christian, as the matrix of existence between Ein Karem (Nativity of the Messiah) and Gethsemane, as an interconnection of materiality in metaphysical reflections, a product of the immaterial of life not lived, as an urgent sacrilegious death, and of the anticipated dimension of the life process- death-life of Christian Messianism.

Vernarth says: "with the slaves in my disparate hands, one picked up what the other was carrying. With my right hand, I took the Duoverso, and with the other my porter; I held my reins on the maxims of Elpenor, before falling to the cliff. One naughty day but with the worst pain in my chest, I went to see him in his room, and I structured him as an immortal, at the time of forming the world, "knowing not even being part of an identity" favoring him to be part of me. combustion and ignition due to the friction of the Universe on the Duoverse. Such was that fearlessness and affordability that it decorated me with unexpected tears of belonging by imprisoning me with superfluous boastfulness. But his courage will be mine, and he will have to anticipate being in the middle of grace, as in Gaugamela wounding my two hearts, one deleterious and the other not..., verbatim saying:

Says the Carrier: “I have to agree to your mandate my lord Vernarth, I have arranged my emetic knights to take him to the empyrean, more remote at nightfall. I know that my own death will also take him, for we are double lives loving death, which falls on a night given to the seventh Falangist soldier. In the midst of souls already disheartened by the misfortune of life, in the figure of eternal death that refuses to receive us discouraged "

Vernarth says: "I do not know if I am or will be brave, because I have forgotten to die, rather I do not know what it is ?, but in the midst of the horses and the hosts of the block, from the anvil of Gaugamela that I have not felt it again..., which is death after feeling my hands and legs severed, but not felt when appropriating some amputee. I know that among the Hypaspists we used umpteenth arrows to mobilize their war apparatus 665, but from the wasteland jump we gathered the delirium of the Falangist command in the Seleucid 666 row, rather detached from every man, in a substantial way in favor of the Alexandrian life, "Of course he was already in the hands of eternity, which hurts more than the tip of an arrow, even being unfaithful to his mortality"

and not in the Universe chained to its fractality, rather of its present-present of the new universe for those who make it negative of itself, towards a clone and neatness, granting it recklessness, who continues to sweep its entity, its dimension, its space, the distances, the matter to receive it in their being. Vernarth, besieges the discursive thinking, under the tides of the tenements and the fears of late emotionality, changing to all the best heroics of the follow and all the experiences of harassing flat lights of the target, in the necropolis that speak resurrected, not being chimera in the best leisure districts live, but immortal of a district..., with steps to constitutive slogans of "succumbed cities, but..., with eternity", connoting after all abolished transference, in eternity present between two beings of mortal rank, the Carrier and Vernarth, Vernarth and Heidegger, but here the last one bringing him the closest radiogram between expiration and eternity, with significant death (End and chaos) and eternity (creation), in the limbo-purgation ratio, as the source of the potion. His total contention and affinity in Heidegger's dialectic, passing through a moment that marks his reincarnation, in the rambling of finite eternity, moving away from Vernarthian ontological and metaphysical reasoning. It was attached magnetic in the Universe, feverish kiss in ambitions of the temporal Being, as substantial of perpetual objectivity towards the unworthy survivor of the Vernarthian theories. So far no similarity is compared to whoever wants it or not, it is part of any estimate or spreadsheet of a complex Duoverse, Within the emerging frontis of progeny, there are ranks derived towards the first to form compound swaths of shelters in the Camels Gigas, who from Jerusalem escorted them with their plantar consciences to Ein Karem, then returning to Gethsemane, to finish in the port of Jaffa. Originally arranged by the children of Israel and the strongholds; Vernarth, Saint John the Apostle, Eurydice, Raeder, and Petrobus with animality, Etréstles, and Kanti, to finally mention King David, who goes to his catafalque before leaving for Jaffa, to return winds to Patmos. Of this primogeniture, the legatee is Vernarth, being presented as co-first-born by giving his portion to Saint John the Apostle, for trust assets of the benefit of a third party for both, and granting the patriarchal and reimbursement to each of his inheritances, being of expeditious aim the liberation of the world that lodged them not authentically in the mediocrity of ascendant ancestors. This prerogative will be decisive to define the dimension of the Duoverse and the One-dimensional Beams as consanguinity, simultaneous nascent and mortal worldview, to radiate them in the beams that support the universe, and from this same, they are transferred to the vision of child-man, child-cherub., for the purpose of defining the Universe-Duoverse physically composed of four areas of its consistency. Time, Being, Divinity and the Four Wings of the Cherubim, as a concept of biodiversity in Lepidoptera, Bumblebees, Bees, Wasps, and Fireflies as tetra-winged animal entities, originating the warnings and impositions in cardinals and poles of their primogeniture, rising from chaos, up to now as mandatory Duoverso, constituting the alpha world, rising of the Animalia and the intermediate visions of the heights that guide the material essences of the imperishable spiritual elemental and structural physics. Being ineffable matter, in the stars that prostrate itself, before each pause of advent and of creations that ****** other creative flashes, in pursuit of a gnoseological doctrine, as a slavish instant, ending in another for the study of the meaning of conceiving in the diligently part of a new world, on the borders of the unknown and of repelled nothingness, suspecting itself in the living artery of nihilistic nothingness, without leaning towards nonexistence that endorses it, or perhaps from a twin Duoverso univitelino in the chaos of unfertilized nature..., rather empowered to the first heir by the law of the Messiah district. Allow yourself, in this way, in the face of this premise and history, to continue and be part of an establishing whole, looking for God in a new world and universe as well..., but shaking before the nothingness that sustains it, as a basic knowledge of value and of immobile Faith. The hypothesis Prosapy-Centric, defines blood lineage unifying the Duoverso as follows:

a)Eternal Existentialism:

He talks about how compassionate creation is and its factotum, that it will be better that way. At the entrance to the Vernarth mouth, within its buccal cubic meters, the Zig Zag Universe, the promoter that caused the Duoverse, broke out. Here your thoughts of eternity are born; not from your brain and discernment, psyche or mind. It exists in a present that will be distributed without end or beginning, in the holistic of the anticipated existence of the being itself, so that everything holistically arises from the mouth of Vernarth, becoming the light of his luminance-ejector thought, being in some way the Zigzag universe that emerges from the outgoing access of its mouth and that manifests itself in some change of quantum physics in a state of hyper-connectivity and always present. The Zig Zag, coexists in eclectic variability of angles, creating regularities in its time and displacement. For the sake of results and translational parallelism as a promoter of the Duoverse, based on the holistic that brings together the effect of the word-fact, but eminently aimed at the morphology of extra language of intellect, rather in the kinetics of the language of human zigzag and physical-material, typical in various line segments of lightning and space storms, resembling his lost and bleeding soul in full battle at the site of Arbela. The other meaning is his salvation from the Council of Patmos, being already Installed in the Eclectic and invisible portal of the Evangelist of Saint John, levitating in his sacred basaltic cavern in Katapausis, in the Patmos archipelago (Koumeterium Messolonghi, Chapter 16 / page 114. Editorial Palibrio- USA). They would find themselves in communion with the archaean clan, which would resemble its proper ectoplasm; thus each one forming a unique part in the masonry dictated to redirect them towards their messianic labors at this stage of the ascension. Vernarth; is aware that he will have to enter the cave, after having ceased his work on standby for three months. He continues to fester in myriad wars and parapsychological regressions, he will remain in a daze to dedicate himself to the beautiful landscapes open towards a horizon..., a neighbor to Palaeolithic and astronomical painting. In the flashes of mathematical prayer, you will capture the spiritual intensity that inspired Saint John to build the temple near his cave of the Apocalypse on the island of Patmos. The saint appears only on certain days looking at him from afar to encourage him in his progress..., Portal Eclectic and invisible is the facet of the face of light, after the invisible that manages to be appreciated with the principle of transferring its connectivity of the immaterial with the material, but done in the finished quality of "Merciful", deriving everything in what supports the splendor of the facts and their objective analysis, by no means the same, because the Zigzag universe, originates theory or thoughts from the perspective of external language and integrally unites it through the optimal results, always imponderable and categorical to follow them and attract them to eternal spiritual good. Being exhaustive of the fact of action, although it is subdivided into executability..., it will continue to be timeless, therefore eternal, in the hands of a universe of thick eternity and stationary death.

The final communion of Zig Zag with the Duoverse, will make this key momentum to replace the Universe of the former Vernarthian world, for inflections of the continuous present, more in the distance of the limits that have to originate than by a simple gesturing stupidity of disbelief, abounding more than a universe that is created in eternity, and that will never again resurface as a physical dimension. The successive potentiality of this theory of holism subtracts actions and not facts, since it always culminates in the limit of infinity, always beginning and never-ending, to then restart in a present that is reintegrated into the access of the oropharyngeal and non-cerebral embouchure, since it has of limiting itself in its shock and subsequent confusion of language-emotion and feeling, to change all eternal emotion, always going hand in hand with the unequivocal and assertive light,

b) Being Universal multi-evocation:

Over Rhodes the auroras could be seen retreating, to attract the new luminances crossing between the atmospheres of the ancient worlds, with stars that were ordered among others, descending at great speed from the Universe, fascinating all Greece, coming from celestial bodies that brought from great Relative distances and proximity between the Duoverso and its satellite widening, allowing to grant subsistence, and routes to the nascent species of the Vernarthian sub-mythology. The Sabbath energy Light is overbreathed repair; here Saint John the Apostle influences through the conduit of the Cinnabar towards the Light of the Mashiach, with the intemperance of life on drops of crystallized water as gifts of Taphoric Light, with synoptic signs of transformation of all the green grass growing like a beard on the slopes of the Willows, where Saint John the Apostle goes back to prayer prayers; so such in repetitive sentences and prayers towards the Universe, which were falling as it was on Mount Tabor in the Transfiguration. All this in the fervor of the willow chins that fell from the galaxies, with their cascades one after another in orderly colophons of fervor making the sky a great source of Moshaic and Elijah voices. (Moses and Elijah) to Christianize the holy oils of the radiant glory of the Universe that was complemented by the Heliac Ortho that was appreciated in different coefficients according to this new position of the parameter of Greece, observed from the Constellation of Pisces, being symbolized as piece as SOS, since Eratosthenes tells us about the fish that saved Derceto (Goddess of Assyrian mythology), after falling into a large lagoon. Seeing therefore in the sky as Fum Al Samakah, Arabic for “snout of the fish” (or Fomalhaut star from the Greek translation). Pisces being bright and of the great dimension to mold it as a whole iris, which was rooted from the formal pelagic accent, towards a spectral affinity of the Duoverse, like leaves of Willow temperatures, on the reflection of the Multi-evocation. For antithetical referendum of the Pleiades between light-years that diminish behind the stars of the magnetic field and its exo-planet. It is necessary to consider that in the wisdom of God, there would be his ordering conscience, on each constellation, and then detach itself before each other that guards each one in centuries of light-years, and in each one of the children as light-years of millions, but of numerical present time quantum; that is to say, all translation on average over ups and downs of spatiality and in remote ages, to zero or from null numerals in the integrality of millions of non-existent light-years, but accumulated and equidistant between the Universal Being and Multi-evocation. An example of cartographic observation shows us Greece at Latitude 39.074208 and Longitude 21.824312, influencing the Duoverse as a complement to the rise of Greece with the latitude of the Heliac Ortho, being Sirius eleven days after the Ekadashi and eleven days before the other at 10 °, Maximizing the light herbalism of the unconscious, to systematize the rise of the Universe imbuing Greece. Refulgent and small electromagnetic systems, led by the Divinity, are freeing themselves of all the units that bind in the minimal Units that can expand with the apostolic energy, rather than a trans-human receiver, in blocks of circulation of waves, related to a Defined spatiality, divine and with its own energy of opening of small worlds of provision of light, and radiation emitted by the deleterious convex of invisible essences in properties that are released from overflowing stagnations of creation, and from the skylights that are more distant than the wavelengths than from a breath of Demiourgy in the chemistry of all multidimensional hyper-existential between frequencies of energy widely displaceable by lines of how many..., in static energy of rest. Ultra colors intensify on the coasts of Rhodes, as a sulfur photoelectric effect of Cinnabar, formalizing mechanics in those sedimentary particles, which undulate in anticipation of the precise amalgamation of both universes, evolving towards the matrix of origin of physical and non-biological state and period, but of eternal divine inspiration, from the mouths of Vernarth, as a resurrected Being electro vigorous, dwelling spacious and sinuosities of curvature and psychic spiraling, The Vernarthian nature will call this phenomenon the Son, since it is the similarity of the halo in the Taphoric Light and in its effect of the baptismal of this Christian Universe called Duoverse, in accordance with the presence of Saint John the Apostle light, among the attending raptor niveous. strangers, arrival-departure and between the nebula of pendency in the nimbus gaseous clouds of fields that mutually heard each other recognizing each other..., leaving only Saint John the Apostle in the perfection of the sky as a universal and Duoversal shadow, first of all being of light being baptized, crucified and risen-ascended, in the metaphysical transfer of his body, as a universal body, as a quantum point between the earth and the sky, between the universe and the Duoverse as a complement of gaseous and spiritual atmospheric earth. Ministering in the judicious and prophetic occlusion, being a juridical part among the myriad bundles of Constellar Pisces that supported the transfigured and converted prophets, before a brand new universe, "Duoverso", witness to the amazement at the proximity of the multi-evoked Universal Being.

c) Reflection space (Light-matter)

The Duoverse having been pulled from its entrails from Vernarth's mouth, and objectual free fall is noticed after disengaging from the quantum Universe, rather than an elusive cacophony that unfolds separated from their bodies in all dimensions, except Vernarthian time, Alluding to the stoning him so that he ignores himself in agony and returns to look for him to revive him as Space-Light, in the presence of matter reflected from himself, which will unfold throughout the Hellenic Panagias, from Kímolos to Tsambika, to make the curves the direct passage that once again bends time towards a fragmented dimensionality. Barefoot was the apostle with Vernarth in the three quarters of the axioms and algorithms, where the conceptuality would overcome the low calculation of what was already ministered by them. Creating space for lapses in dreams of the Stairs, with steps of Topaz, in this particular case of Saint John the Apostle, "seeing open skies and angels of God go up and down on the son of man." Here some sidereal Solar gleams are illuminated that have nights for a sunny day, Vernarth resting on the side of the Monastery with a stone on its head and dozing to dream like Etréstles in the Hexagonal Baptistery of the Shepherds in Ein Karem, but of the compact sweetness of the famous luminous Cinnabar ascending vertically where the Yahvic Being, who was presented to him as the Abrahamic patriarchate nexus. Endowing him with celestial dreams about stones that inherit west and east towards the north noon, in space of hallucinations of Jacob's subconscious, for the satisfaction of the luminous pictorial ligament. Thus, a timid but decisive reflex pointer of space and reflection is detected, which includes fragments of spectrum and tonalities of a machine unconscious, to raise the Duoverse in a depressive day of the scathing moment.

d) Physical energy (molecular entropy)

From the bases of Theoskepasti, the physical system emerged in two sums after the movements of the pendular censers that exceed the elliptical of the Cinnabar and the potential of the ejectable force field, for ductility of its forces that emanated from the triad with the archpriest, helping him Etréstles and Kanti, who would take them to the Hellenika Necropolis. They make of their golden bodies the ephemeral speed mechanized in the originality of the homily system, to break in the guardian friction of the gravitational axial of the body of Light of the cinnabar, which received the sulfur kinetics of the defective organic matter that was wrapped in a bizarre alloy of sulfur light, and in all the forces gathered, not rubbing with the cinnabar obelisk, already invaded by the energy that made it superficial, between the shell of the Panagia Theoskepasti covering and the strange normality that made them physical-organic. No scrubbing would continue the movement of the fleeting angle of the anvil of Hephaestus, but the static on the surface, lay unchanged before the forces of the back and forth of the molecules that sank late, shooting from the pendular area of his bowl and then starting with full power for new angles that will take advantage of the mechanics of the forge and the friction clean and **** before the joint, and the resistance of the reactivation of the second period of the movement, to forward them to Tsambika in the response signal. Quantifying later between the inferiority and the intangible shock reaction in the light radiosities of the cinnabar re imparted towards Rhodes, forming resistance, but with immanent entropy, with a high degree of fineness, in such a way that once the conservation rays are fired, the response to Rhodes will come from Kímolos with the particles and combustions of sulfurous gas and mercury, generating entropy of two quantum and physical times between the Dodecanese and Cyclades, knowing that the inert matter is inactivated alive, thus envisioning the contingent presence of iron in the geology of both islands, with more than eighty percent, and of gravitating oxygen for the Vas Auric and its materialization, as a ****** impression reducing its physical dimension and enlarging its water content in pelagic beings of the Aegean. This would suggest the homogeneity of both island territories, appease the conception of substitutions that frolic from north to south, to break their normal balance, depleting what is island land towards oceanic land. In this way they will be mixed entropically for a new generation of fertile life that balances in chaos, already in the hands of Saint John the Apostle and Vernarth, in the main nave of the Monastery that seemed to oscillate atomized and vanished, but then atomically restructured, slyly dividing the canons of traditional entropy, and making it disproportionate to the biodiversity ordering of the sterile and the fertile, reordering itself as a mutable force excluding the reality of act-effect, invested in the integrity of life-death-life, as a molecular target in a double physical dimensional unit, making the prospective universe by splitting from any other format, to become another and another physical dimension. Universe-Duoverse, they shake like two spheres, almost joining each other, but separating into heterogeneous classics, as a panegyric, under the invocation of Conviction and Faith. The universes self-recomposed and redistribute themselves before our eyes, but before the consistent devotion of this homily, it makes them astonishing and phenomenal (everything that happens is recomposed - if the tree fractures, but then it straightens re-fractured, before our eyes being recomposed). Thus the chaos of the Universe is resolved, appropriating a new sequence of continuous creation, starting from the same creative property, but of molecular entropy, almost in adverse defect, but of constriction of the yielded body, to be incorporated into the Cinnabar beam of light. dynamic, generating ignition at the ends of each part of the structure obelisk, in order to release and stimulate on the absorbent..., of the Hexagonal Birthright in Tsambika,

e) One-Dimensional Beams

From the hexagon, everything is dimensioned on the peaks that can be seen in the starry nights from the curved kilometers of Bethlehem. Everything goes on top of the desert mountains and valleys, above the vagaries of climatic heights, and landslides of an entire believing community and its followers. In twelve advancing camels, of which the first six are exclusive to the Birthright, and then the seventh Giga camel is from King David of Bethlehem.

The beams are the architectural support portion of the physical-ethereal God and of his ethereal-physical word, supposedly of advent in grazing of the hardwoods, and the secret anomalies of a new Aramaic message, anticipating the vigor of insects and birds that were grouped together. in the journey that goes back and forth. The Beams are stars of heaven sustained by the Cherubim and the Archangels, through the paths of conversion and the support of the Christian time; haughty and implacable hegemony for the propaedeutic of phylogeny, but more on the very chemistry of creation carrying its winged Lepidoptera tetra, pheromones, and the obfuscation of an elemental nascent child in his own evangelical philosophy from an inter-sword dimensionality, and of the gloom of a manger shouted Kafersesuh, before compendiums of two pyramidal landmarks of inflection of his word in created animals, in the affinities of the world and the Animalia, personalizing shepherds carriers of pollinations, totalizing the generational of the language that is concealed so far, as well as the turns in the musks, and their legitimacies from the Baptistery of the Shepherds in Ein Karem, parabolizing their nomenclature and Polygonia of a child made man, already coexisting! but representing himself as a lifeless man in the fullness of a child of a distinguished canon. and his legitimacies of the Baptistery of the Shepherds in Ein Karem, already coexist! but representing himself as a lifeless man in the fullness of a child of a distinguished canon, that followed him towards the superlative moment of the bending near him, twisting and changing squeezable pressure in the cords that forged his path, towards the cornices and trusses of the upper celestial vault, where the shed of doubts was next to the Cherubs. Giving mechanics to the prism that arched the beams in the horizontal lines, taking them towards the amplitude of other lines, which remained solid before the variation, suspecting mutating to one of sudden two-dimensionality. The sections of the timber framework, which looked fatigued before the primary classification, which showed the attitude of the little Messiah, taking out effulgence from its beams, and rolling on other pillars, postponing the vectors of the tangential, contributing bits in rhomboid specialties, that blurred the cylinders of amplitude and field of vision of all those who remained in their nativity. Making diametrical glances so as not to be distracted and adore him with a broad and rectilinear heart, in transversal visualizing for all, the one-dimensional crossed wood, which in its geometry schematized letters and numbers of kabbalah, which differ in dissimilar resistance of Christic ambivalence, as a forerunner of martyrdom. on the wooden cobblestone of Golgotha. This presaged capacities to read them in the Torah and Zohar, gathering everything in a whole, in those vivid tormenting lapses that he felt in advance, as reversible entropy, turning their substance to prepare them for the day of an abolished martyrdom. Making diametrical glances so as not to be distracted and adore him with a broad and rectilinear heart, in transversal visualizing for all, the one-dimensional crossed wood, which in its geometry schematized letters and numbers of kabbalah, which differ in dissimilar resistance to Christic ambivalence, like the anticipation of martyrdom on the wooden cobblestone of Golgotha. This presaged capacities to read them in the Torah and Zohar, gathering everything in a whole, in those vivid tormenting lapses that he felt in advance, as reversible entropy, turning their substance to prepare them for the day of an abolished martyrdom. which differ in dissimilar resistance to Christic ambivalence, like the anticipation of martyrdom on the wooden cobblestone of Golgotha? This presaged capacities to read them in the Torah and Zohar, gathering everything in a whole, in those vivid tormenting lapses that he felt in advance, as reversible entropy, turning their substance to prepare them for the day of an abolished martyrdom, pigeonholed him towards a pre-existing Hellenistic aspect in characteristics of patronage as a representative figure of a male, and a lady of Ptolemaic Egypt in great iconic religiosity, coexisting as a priestess of a female order in the Greek protocols with him. Becoming inseparable in the preeminence of mother and son, as unilateral gender, and of substantial element for the social and political order that reigned in the ancient era. Laying here the unilateral gender indispensable for the social and political order, which is substantiated at the dawn of the empires of all the time, and the patriarchal society? Symbolically Joshua in this cogitabundant providence, adds the feminine value in the society in the Kafersesuh's outlet of the Judah manger, dispensing mainly to women, A great Zohar light, gathered all towards a whole in those errors that Joshua felt in advance, as reversible entropy, giving back his wise existence to prepare them for the day of his sacrifice. Pre Existing in catharsis and substance of divinity connected with the phylogenetic species, classifying up to an Aramaic pontificate of pheromones settled in the lithospheric site of Gethsemane, in a biological sense and in close coincidence in lapse wading, or the phenomenological simultaneity of Eukaryota and Glaucophyta until late Animalia, giving relation parental in characters of the vibrational timbre of the Beams, and its atavistic pedestal, readapting in evolutionary ellipticals of winged tetra species. Allowing to change the ancestral linguistic accouterments in processes of redesigning the divine genetic historical tree and increasing anomalies in the human earthly culture, and not human anthropomorphic in a reviving profanity of fruitive frequency amplitudes, for those who resort to it, monopolizing and synchronous in diachronicity of their specimens. The lights of Joshua's gazes are the Light of Christian Life and Time, in the entity of Joshua born and bloodless from the nature of Child-Man, but of mortal design in the same compulsion to see the luminescence of life in the manger Kafersesuh and only incorporeal unity. Being in exemption from Ego with its structure of living child and dead man, he rushes rebellious and ostentatious in the architecture of the One-dimensional Beams, yielding the glimpse of the aforementioned progenitor "Eye versus Eye", seeing himself like this..., son hovering in the arteries of a Universal-Duoversal life, from a single dimension of cyclical one-dimensional length, encompassing conjecture and biological, the symbolic-allegorical conception of extreme co-divinity, as an exclusive precept of the delicate infinity of the Being of a Messiah, with paraphrases or glosses of Aramaic exegetical affinity, tracing from a linguistic period. Here are the contortions of the Olive Tree Berna, transfigured into everlasting orality and refractory syllable, to incubate eternal rabbinic gifts of perpetual reluctance, beyond the reach of the ego-annihilating will and of apathetic, inert ultra-affections and of miraculous phenomena.

f) Hexagonal Birthright

Civilization has an arched inflection in its regency at the head of the favorable family caste in the blessing, whose hiding place will have to be entrusted to a clan, having to make inquiries that formerly only related to consanguineal minorities from the same family trunk, thus protecting the pantries and accessories in warfare to consolidate the economy, and invigorate its commercial coffers. The land would be and would be an essential partition insignia for the legitimate transmission of epochs and inter-seasons, which received them from its descendants for representation of geomorphological heraldry, given in its regional condition. In the noise of the seventh seal, heaven was silent for half an hour and the seven angels stood before God, and they gave seven trumpets, the other is to appear in front of the altar with a golden censer, to compile it in other prayers in all the saints, on the golden altar that was in front of and in front of the throne - And from the hand of the angel the smoke from the incense with the prayers of the saints - And the angel took the censer, and filled it with the fire of the altar, and threw it to the earth; and there was thunder, and voices, and lightning, and an earthquake - And the seven angels who had the seven trumpets got ready to blow them - The first angel sounded the trumpet, and there was hail and fire mixed with blood, which were thrown upon the earth ; and a third of the trees were burned up, and all the green grass was burned up - The second angel sounded the trumpet, and like a great mountain burning with fire it was hurled into the sea; and a third of the sea was turned to blood - And a third of the living creatures that were in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed - The third angel sounded the trumpet, and a great star fell from heaven, burning like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers, and on the springs of the waters - And the name of the star is Wormwood. And the third part of the waters became wormwood, and many men died because of those waters because they became bitter - The fourth angel sounded the trumpet, and the third part of the sun, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars were smitten, so that a third of them would be dark, and there would be no light in the third part of the day, and also at night - And I looked, and I heard an angel fly through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice: !!

"Being in six instants at the Golden Gate of Jerusalem with Saint John the Apostle, they reordered the majority for a protected subordination in the minor family descended from the eldest son, for the purpose of sustaining them to reach the possession of their theological morphology, in this door, being the only one that will remain closed…, until the second coming of the Messiah. The scheme of the camelids in their osteometry tells us that their heads before Advent! Distorted their calypso lights on the surface of their skeletons, locking the jaws of other camelids, thus bypassing the Apostle's strap, which through the foramen of the supraorbital, thickened the strides that pretended immobile before the opening of the Golden Door. Of course, they were prisoners of their self-denial for the length of their footsteps to the rhythm of the sensitive skulls, In the fourth camel Raeder, he cleared the margins that allowed them to increase their attempts to withdraw them from the golden doors, but the dislocation of the orbits of their ocher eyes, denoted their holes in the condylar fossa, distancing the vicinity of the Tehillim advocated by King David in the Seventh Seal of a stuck Giga Camel. The metric form innovates them of ubiquity, for omnipresence in the camels before the gates, and after the gates, thus leaving the site of the eighth gate, deserting the camels behind the gates and arcades pointing to the old cemetery. of the prophecies that Elijah holds, and in procuring generational stoning of inter camelids, which would be channeled into twelve plus another dozen, but behind all, appearing to be six, later joining King David, who would provide the parallelism of the Seventh Seal. This caravan was numbered from one to six, saving the vertices of the Golden Gate that joined modestly at the odd vertices, under the odd cross of the same vertex, which made the equilateral coherent according to the three angles where Vernarth and Etréstles went, and then joined other pairs of vertices in a crucified chain in the flat and secondary complementarily of the seventh angel, but with epilogue character of the Seventh Seal. Thus it would be numbered according to the Gigas Camels, the Golden Gate, governing them for a family of six family angles and a seventh seal, for the performance of the family sustenance of primogeniture in the reinsertion of Saint John the Apostle, since he was banished by Emperor Domitian. Making themselves succulent of the gold of the Seventh Seal, on the collective unconscious of the first-born, for the good of the sub-genitor son. Here the indication goes for the purpose of populating the consecration of granting greater goods to those who second and could lead forces of abandonment and secular sedentary, for the need to welcome sacrifices of goodness and preferences of lay annoyance and earthly secular strengthening. The kinetics would move the six numbered over the vertices of the Sun in three bevels, joining the pairs in vertices covered in the circumscribed mesh of vehemence, which is impacted with the solid Golden Gate of Jerusalem, depositing the concentric radii of the polarized magnet on the struts of the camel of the central ram, for the affinity of the contraption of a trajectory for all Judah, in six predestined latitudes to Ein Karem, in the Hexagonal Baptistery of the Shepherds".

With symmetrical scrupulousness at a certain time, the rounded bisector of the psychic lines of the peritoneum fold of the solitary flanks of the Camels Gigas, towards a vocal peritoneum set six times more than a seventh, was estimated, in the apothem of the two-dimensional figure of the Febo hexagon angel, with less centrality, for the foundation of the Apostle and Vernarth, regulating them by points and sides, on the perpendicular bezels, prostrating towards a more orthodox and straight line, mutinying with radials phases on the bisector..., giving a quotient of odd numbers, which cut the first round of anointing, among all those that were retained in the daydreams of catching them for involuntary deaths. From Gaugamela's stratagem, three thousand muscular Hetairoi descended, towards the implantation of heart nuclei in the camelids, on the Susa Gate and the oblique break marching towards the war site, creating a fissure between camels, and the sphinx of Alexander the Great breaking into the Left-wing of the Golden Gate. This was the casuistry of Vernarth's psychic advance impetus, who once was at the precise moment of stalking, hypnotizing the gap of the Achaemenides, but unaware of that mechanical moment, persists in going after the Giant Camels. He guided them with his right hand to both sides, equipped with heart irons that exorbitated the whispering of his pectoral canals, interrupting the dawn of the Cinnabar, with the antigen readjusting the hinges of the door before falling untimely. Vernarth, with his sinister, calls upon the Hindu family who tried to open the breach of Alexander with his Macedonian baggage, thus preventing him from lying in the reliquary in contrition towards Vernarth himself. The infamous moment must have passed through the swords of some who resisted when fleeing from the held Golden Gate, giving up the rear of Vernarth with the camels recovered and saved from the abandonment of their afflicted hearts, resigning themselves with empty hands and with an outpouring of victory, but with two units confronted in his Portal of Imagination.

g) Reflection temporality

In cavern series, the lava was converted into cations of hydronium, in underground pits that glowed in Tsambika's temporality when the homily was officiated. Some pieces and calcareous boulders rotated random by the humid and dark narrowness of the subterranean reflection, having lived in the heavenly paradise that formed them by the volcanic tube and its syngenetic, by the erosion of the subsoil of Rhodes. The speculative rock icons expired of the symptoms, with albuminous cliffs of the genetics of the Theoskepasti chapel, Etréstles carried under his arm the expiration contract of the Universe, to deliver it with his signature, for the dimensional transfer will. Everything flourished with attractive mineralization systematizations, under an astral posology, In the cognitive, Kanti memorized his wanderings in Crete, imagining his physical body united with his mind on the paths of the shoulder of his ancestry, with batches of clockwork that went and passed through his physiognomic, bathing with the piece wind, but also with the hard shoulder that came straight towards him, showing him new encephalic pathways, which surrendered in epistemological globes, but levitating in excess of the hard shoulder and the unknowns, for states of temporality that became mentalized in pursuit of a supra desire..., disease or typologies long-standing who used the supposed ontological formalization, gave functioning the property of body with the memory of advanced towards a new Duoversality. The officialization of Ars Choralis, is solemnized for processes of emotional property; In this way the cave of Being and its Temporality is made haughty, self-isolating for intra-cave investigations, as corollaries and agility in those who yearned for identity, being able to attach themselves to deities in dozens of epicenes, which would be from tens to ten, thus being seventy tens and a half, which would be seventy-five of the seven tens, and of the unconscious of the syntagm that Etréstles carried away, separating the syntactic of the Vas Auric hypothesis, so that they coexist..., although the pestilential decays before the rolled-up syntactic of Kanti's head. Untreated and conscious-unconscious to his instinct, resorting and harassing the procedural bars, of the Ergo Sum parameter. The temporality of reflection, In momentum ac Diadem, it shone from the third trumpets of the Seventh Seal to the potential of the twilight corrodes and their regions that made the shoulder of the shoulder the awareness of temporality reflected in required dismayed collectivities, to transcribe exhortations to the behavioral pattern of the temporality of love Faust. Little remains immobile, little drive when two masses of consciousness withdraw to the storehouses of the Universe, already advantageous of their exhaustion, but inheriting them in precipitous emotions towards the pre-consciousness factors in the heights of the mountains of Crete and Kímolos.

Kanti the steed says: “Deus Nostri Pontificatus Annis et ad eum, God is my pontificate and my way to Him…, Adonis in the relative absence of credit, before Ephebos with absolute deafness, surprising me here in the Diospyros and neuro archetype flight. I ride farther than my physical-emotional, contributing in the micro-fusions of the tubules, in quantum, and interacting with the fineness of the minuscule substance, within themselves. Almost injuring the storms that vibrate in the mine of a risk prop of a steed, in pursuit of a trance that only ends up being the architect and augur of knowledge..., of when and where it agonizes more than once, but within the limit of the Duoverse crushed at his own peril, continually evaluating himself to transfer a genetic force into my hooves of solid steel, but ornamental and of Reflected Temporality.


h) Expansion and Aramaic Taxonomy

Organic taxonomy, as a pre-ordering order, classifies the harmlessness of language before the invasion of Alexander the Great. Although there were implosions of the Greek language, its transboundary taxonomy would be shifted towards Judea. Pre cited is its variant pharyngolaryngeal tracheo, in this assertiveness and occasionality, it predisposes emphasis on orthographic rather than phonetic incidents, citing Galilea as a precursor of the Aramaic and taxonomic thesis of Gethsemane, prior to its expansive conventionalism of enrapturing her in her differentiation, and in the expansive hotbeds necessary to channel the basic axons of commerce, between antiquity under the prerogative of supplied ethics and pre-classified inputs, such as food and geographic furnishings of economic arts, as well as, the syntax of words that could have curvature and geometry in the forms or linear designs of the time. Any letter could be interpreted as a physiognomic form or as tools of manifest imperialism, coexisting execrable or blessed as languages or keys of immunological communication, with symbolisms of languages spoken in rituals of systematization, and of obfuscation of a metaphysical Messiah, always an angel, for when this is the case. In other words, the water speaks to him in dialects and adults with an oriental language, appearing cryptic in the appointments that are related to the language of the great Extra Universal heritage.
Vernarth's Aramaic is an ***** composed of valuation graduation and generational expansion, opening evolutions combined with the matrix of “Ethereal Spatiality”, towards a channel or rib with a common end in what is done on the margin of Faith. and it is predestined on the basis of object and substance, as a regulatory organism, for groupings of species within the biological language or not, as well as in the fissure of a Cladia of lichen fungi, forming the optics of expression as spelling and not as a utilitarian concept. Amplifying what a camel is; this is how it is importunate, being its **** consensus with the "S" backward in a perfect camelid, the "T" also being a perfect Cobra approaching the three S's of the Syriac Aramaic alphabet. The “Y with L fused” of the Aramaic alphabet with a large elephant, and finally the “H” as a pelican simile, like the pelagornithids or Pelagornithidae, fossilized in the emotional collective of rock tribes, progressing from elephants, camels or pelicans in the search for a literate language and consonant shapes that are attributed to their jaws and pharyngolaryngeal substrates..., observing long vowels, as in the language of an organic universal alphabet. The matrix is timeless, branching out of the mechanics of natural and phenomenal selections, if it is metaphysical or is contributing Demiourgy on the infinity of the encodings or depending on the size of its geo-referencing, it will contribute energy exchanges with predictive purposes of information of orders, and adaptations of the calcified scientific space, Vernarth, dives into the ponds or Naídes of the Aegean and survives, just when the networked volcanoes were swallowing all the seas in the world. It braced being only part of the laps of the sea, tattooing with its gaze the chthonic nymphs, before envious and backsword ogres with gills, which multiplied more than any myth-poetic. Its power of convergence is inhibited by the poetic myths of primordiality and of cosmology as a natural branch in nautical miles traveled by its arms, without knowing who crossed them, survivor, in its advance, and treasuring the arm plunges on and under the scalded clay objects, perhaps as implantation of the muddy and hyper-flood lexicon, empowering itself in its translation from Syria to Patmos, and from linear B Mycenaean to Syriac Aramaic languages,


i)Sub - Verthian Mythology (Camera Obscura)

Adhered to the ancient parallels of the cult, the mythology of Horcondising lashes out. Stale and axiomatic source of pragmatic and rational earth that emanates from this constrained fusion of the Universe in the metamorphosis of Duoverso-Horcondising. Social and genealogical plates date more than seven hundred years from Lombardy and northern Venice in Italy, Spain, and France. The mission of the Horcondising is the transhumant myth, and Chaos of the ancestral family cenacle, in view of a family rule, succeeding in continuous litanies that consecrate rites beyond genetic archaeological death. The consolation of souls will revive and will be under the edict of the Sub-mythology in repose landing in successive parapsychological regressions, which will speak of deaths suffered at the edge of their test tube lives, Under the mythology, there is the sub-fable, prone to boundaries where the statement innovates the entire structure of hermeneutics, as a written notification and complacent verb, for lords of the grass and granaries of granaries, narrating myth-stories in messes of revived verbality. Thus in Rhodes and Patmos, Andronicus of  Rhodes will guard the doorway of his hobbies again, so that these disciplines are conducive to sponsorships of words under reasons of a nature concerning Saint John the Apostle risen in flesh and spirit, in contrast to the conclusions of the reason to leave breathless the destiny that the just cheer and disapproval of diction of not certain science, under ships that cover the commendable salvation in exegetical storms that go from a liberated shelter, as well as in what differs from the et Grammatica institutione arithmetica in that each one writes what it understands, and adds what humanistically makes existence in a biblical alphanumeric dimension, from the imaginary in some of its leaders such as Zefián, Borker, Leiak, Kaitelka, in Hyperdisis and the Zig Zag Universes. Making the mythical an ensemble with deities that rule the infinite, achieving more secular religiosities than in a radius of religion, founded by characters that are already pagan mythology. This is the raison d'être of the sub-mythology, which springs from one already narrated and rationalized, but in the contradiction of what underlies under the very observance that unites itself, forging itself creditor of very new myths within others, with characters that have never been or have been parasitizing on another source of cognition. Thus becoming extensive and prolonged in its passage liers sumptuousness of other arcane myths, within the same ones that inhabit the mythological lie, without blemish from veracity belonging to the living-lie in pursuit of a dead-truth. Even if it is in this way or hermeneutic method, continue to beat and go to meet the Castellar Imaginary del Horcondising and the Camera Obscura, which always live and revive in the sub-imagination, but from a mythical truth in a regime of multitudinous voice. and myth-poetics.

From the sooty Camera Obscura the spindle was obtained over the diameters of each edge, Vernarth of the same chaos, converged from the square but not the spherical world, from this sooty box together with his master Zefián, who polished and shot vines of light over the projection of the same box, and of the quantum ark on the acropolis of Leiak, simulating entelechy in its projection with the ultraviolet light of light similar to the earth, but not square, rather appearing to be a square sphere. After repeated intervals, Vernarth opened the slits of his hands, also hollowed, here other globules appeared but not spheroids, rather quadrilaterals at the end of the third phase in the last three series that showed the complete reflection of a tiny world, that just clamored for amnesty as a matter that had been beginning to form with another factor on a large scale, from this fractality that would appear as Vernarthian sub-mythology. Camera Obscura, in a combination with twelve atomic masses, stands out starting in the irradiation of sexagesimal nomenclature; imagining fractionality between sixty microseconds to sixty in the hexagonal polygon of the Primogeniture and the Baptistery of Ein Karem. Being used in the elevations of the stars and the Heliac Ortho of dawn, which would find the black box that was nailed in its twelve apostolate angles. The whole times were divided into more exact numbers that surrounded him in his Camera Obscura doing trigonometry with other rectangles of three equilateral, making multiples of twelve on the line of the hypotenuse of sixty, dividing by the hexagonal, which is the angular line of the six sides of progression of the Duoverse becoming a spheroid square, for an analogy of Hexagonal Birthright with the multiple of twelve for the sake of the Giant Camels, leading them to the obfuscation of the Horcondising fused with the Duoverse, by means of Pi (π), in the diameter equidistant between the Universe and the Duoverse disintegrated in two by the concentric radius of both geometric units. In the same way, Vernarth multiplied the existence of his new sexagesimal world in nths by sixty followed by infinite numbers of zeros, canceling the radical time of the masses of anodyne particles. The corondels or watermarks, overflowed with all the irregularities of the system, showing the decimal after the comma.


j)Verthian Apostolic Conception - Kashmar

Vernarth, was in Sardinia in the megalithic complexes Nuraga when he conceived his apostolate as a messenger, biologically entrenched in the taxonomic stasis, with a merely profane and urban framework. Whose classification he would transmit to his relatives after long periods in Macedonia, sailing and doing his falconry and philosophical avant-garde chores with Aristotle, in a laxity that invited him after long rejoices to record and sculpting messages with the doves of his village. Near Pella, in the central region of Macedonia, where his general Alexander the Great resided, south of the Axio River, his abode was nomadic and was on a hill near the lakes and mountains surrounded by Greco-Barbarian inhabitants, tracing the Chalkidian league., after the Peloponnesian War. He was in great campaigns in the former Pella, His will as an artist is precisely to be an apostolate of a thought that would intersect with the Yahwist gift to an apostolate of the Apostle Matías, whose connection would provide his transliteration of the post-mortuary link of the Jesus of Nazareth, replacing Judas Iscariot, due to his apostasy. Vernarth, distressed by this episode, became Commander of Alexander the Great, lying already primitive in his ranks of Hetairoi, transcending over the scourge of Judas Iscariot, to face in the arena of Pella. In a reverie near the Thermaic Gulf, he genuflected under the sacrosanct trees near some illustrious Kashmar Cypresses, channeling his furious and tramontane spiritual into the gulf, to take him out of a banal summer in the transition of an immolated soul, and make him walk for thirty days barefoot, without sweet potatoes in his hands to ego stone him, only naming him slavish stubble of the crops in the deleterious nesting places of the Ravens of Kashmar, bidding him so that his blood is ****** by the heels of the rooted trees of Thor forest, usurping his "Gift of Iahvé ”In dishonor of its Hebraic appellation, for the onomatopoeic of its rhetoric, resulting from the feckless roar of black lineage, which will emanate from the mouth of the Aulos, whistling inside the Cobra. In the aforementioned link, the group of twelve was recomposed, being in the gulf and in the incidences of the re-indoctrination of the twelve apostolates, he is with his prayer and atonement in the mystical character for the community worshiping the Kashmar; which roots hardened towards the silent immolation portent as Judas entered the black night, for excessive twists of the bifurcations, intertwining with the Beams of the Thermaic cliff, like a lynx observing the height and its prominence in that of Judas dwindling over the stained areas of hell..., thus its remains were scattered by the synod of bustard birds in the sprayed sky of globular creation, faded by conclusive hordes of the late Neolithic Druid and by the deity Belinus, with ingots of sooty petrified poplar from Hecate boiling in the Underworld. We shoveled over the holm oak groves and their trees, sacralizing their factotum after the ritual of the sanctuary of the thus his remains were scattered by the synod of bustard birds in the sprinkled sky of globular creation, faded by conclusive hordes of the late Neolithic Druid and by the deity Belinus, with ingots of Hecate's sooty petrified poplar boiling in the Underworld. We shoveled over the holm oak groves and their trees, sacralizing their handyman after the ritual of the sanctuary of the thus his remains were scattered by the synod of bustard birds in the sprinkled sky of globular creation, faded by conclusive hordes of the late Neolithic Druid and by the deity Belinus, with ingots of Hecate's sooty petrified poplar boiling in the Underworld. We shoveled over the Holm oak groves and their trees, sacralizing their handyman after the ritual of the sanctuary of the Dodona, in uniformity towards a murmur in the leaves from oak in the spell of man towards an oracle, to consummate it with the mendicant count of the Ziziphus Spina-Christi; hawthorn of the crown of Jesus but with implants of Kashmar, on the crown of Judas already immolated.

Vernarth walked alone through the inlet of Skala, on Patmos, when he had to undertake a trip to Judah, even so, he also walked bi-location in the inlet of Sardinia, after being in the megalithic complex Nugarhe, Vernarth, Etréstles, and Walekiria, they approach matching Tuscany. Once they were instantiated in Sardinia, a coastal sailboat transported them in the middle of a stormy day, it was a great happy day to arrive in La Spezia. Here they parked at night following the Liturgy, standing out those that coincided with Lent of Holy Week, where one day they were seen talking with Petrarca and Laura de Noves. The olive trees keep pietism with the phantasmagoria of the Kashmar, who made the double murmur of the spell of the Duoversal man. Always in Tuscany, the tracks below the garden have been occupied, which has a distant view of the roofs and towers of Florence. The monumental fountain set on a steep hill on a side flank of the garden terrace has a seated god flanked by lions in relief of stucco from a niche decorated with pebble mosaics and padded masonry. " Here at the Verbena of a long feast day, all together with Vernarth get drunk with Corinth Wine, which they brought and did not stop swinging to the rhythm of the music that made them foresee multi-existence beyond limitless sensibilities, turning their role closer to from the instigated destiny to Patmos in the hands of the original Duoverso with translation, rotation and Duoversal Theurgic orbit, for the spell-dogmatic invoking ultra-sensory powers of angels and gods, in order to signify with his country land near Pella,

k)Fractality and Spirit-Cinnabar Dynamics

In the black camera obscura, certainly connected blues made other dark holographic areas that were enlarged super connected to the optical perspective, conceiving of the infinity of a luminescence that was fractalized, the black-blue pre-existing towards the Z pattern = Exp (Z / OB ^ 4), what is the equivalent to the set of the Bernese Olive Tree Rapa, on the border of its Lipogenesis, which would appear in the chromatic version and final maturity of the olive tree, for the fractal exponential of Z =; where all the points of the complex plane Z = (OB, iy) are iterated in the corresponding function Olives Berna in a set of IY, and in all the iterations where an arbitrary constant (Cx, iCy) is added Cinnabar in lines of orthogonal sets X and Y, in such a way that the choice of the constant "seed" will determine the unique shape of the profile and the color of the fractal, once the chromatic pattern has been defined. In the paradigms shown in this continuation, a constant has been chosen, as it will only produce divergence and will have been qualified with the escape velocity algorithm, to contract exact self-similarity stratagems in this, which is the most restrictive type of car. -similarity; requiring the fractal to appear identical at different scales.

The holistic spórtula of the Cinnabar in some pecuniary exercises, are impelled for a tacit and absent society, in Every night beginning at dawn, everyone retreats and the Cinnabar appears like a kaleidoscope apostolizing in glorious joy, where the Aramaic synergy between the Garden of Olives and Gethsemane, is concatenated with the entirety of the Phylogenetic species with the homily in Tsambika and Theoskepasti, such as the new relationship of the link between species that were improper and endemic to the region near the stable in Bethlehem de Kafersesuh, to be inter-inseminated in the banks of the slopes of Gethsemane, in such a way, that the linguistics would begin to be absorbed in Joshua, and it would go for a closer shortcut towards the classification of the traditional and omnipotent variants, which migrated through the Olives to renew and preserve the Aramaic or Aramaic languages, from a shared origin now, for the omnipotent salvific languages that were to be addressed in Gethsemane. Once starting the splendor in the city of the eight gates, and from such interference, involve the Lepidoptera taxon, inseminating the populations of organisms related to lexicons to shed life and language,

l)Vas Auric – Cinnabar (Φ)

The pecuniary prerogative of spórtula, makes the Vas Auric and the Mandylion its residence, tending towards an algebraic sense of the two diametral in a cross by the perpendicular, towards the tension of the shortest segment by the long, tracing a circumference of radius and a half. Homologating in the interposed eclipse of the golden or golden number, for the divine proportion in consequence of irrational fractioning numbers. Shortening the passage of the algebraic numbers with the infinite decimal towards the Cinnabar with seven arches in parentheses reflecting in the partition of the apse in both temples of the homily, making the period of antiquity, files registered in mega center of the quantum memory of Cinnabar, before disrupting the genesis of the Duoverso.

The First Treatise of the Vas Auric fell into the hands of Vernarth, one day of heavy plutonium sheets en masse of the golden number. The vertical avalanche was segmented when the dichotomy of another line that collided with the segments was not altered, or rather omitted by certain temporary blindness of the Duoverso world that it just boasted. Compositions of number Z are made, and subdivision in its cinematographic optics, divided into two slow shots of a small element that became part of the controversy of Vas Auric as a medallion and Auric as Mystic Gold, with distribution laws.

"Zeus wakes up shaky, full of headache saturated in Pro-headache Herbs
Jophiel is speaking this time in the Kabbalistic Torah language...
with its golden commoner and super zone of Organikon Sorousliston Papadikon….
secular music that supplies Zeus with protein albumin,
to make him more human... Zeus accepts Jophiel placing him in his discernment
over the house of Jophiel; divine island to throw cartomancy...
bring the second ray to the Sahasrara on his crown,
pacified love that is the suspicious and risky loser of everything...
risk in the head, especially when condemnation is born!

And the floristics, over the stolon of the veins, moves synchronously with the prolongations, speeds, and acceleration of the emancipated leaves of the first order of the upper crown, up to the lower ones, thickening the golden spirals of a certain type of inflorescence, confining the umbilical zones of Vernarth, and the plantar area of its feet between three and more than a hundred steps that come from certain metamorphoses, creating peduncular areas, acting as a support for Vernarth and its Elder areas, brought from the Bumodos stream, after a string therapy, creating psychic supports to endorse globalized neuralgic. Understanding that the line of his neuralgia oscillates the greater analog of the Messiah in the cross pierced by the Hastae Praetorian, in the most remote of the elliptical of pain, reduplicated by accumulated energy, almost like mystical suffocation. On the part of the growth of the tangent in growth and of the evolution of the reflection, where the attenuation of the opposite effect is unleashed, allowing convalescence zones in signs of propeller blades around the Vas Auric, crossing vertical and horizontal beams of lights, in search of Light Angled and refractory solar, for the palfrey of the Kanti Steed, abstracted from excessive rain, which uncrossed the tempos of the aura of the organic and aerial underground, towards the duplicity of curves of the multi-cloned numbers and angered by their industrious dynamics of skewed movement, towards the effective solar..., tending to the effects of successive trends of the vaporous numeral of Vas Áurico Cinnabar.

m) Psychic Trisomy

The species and somatic acquired deposits of DNA spirals, given their characteristics, will make transformations in more than one cellular taxon for a homologous pair. Here Kaitelka the whale down from Sub-Mythology, will circle in the Baltic Sea, compromising neuralgia in it as a superfluous essence due to its trisomy, making a comparison with psychic trisomies that Vernarth suffered at least four times a month, from the first and eleventh day, after his parapsychological regressions when he sailed over abysses and anesthetized zones on glacial plankton in the North Sea. Kaitelka individualized her cellular regressions, becoming a prehistoric cetacean and when she lagged beyond or before her creation, she transferred psychic trisomies due to her twenty-one chromosome. Kaitelka's karyotype was directed towards the crease of her eyes, due to an infection in the area of her basal inter fins, which disturbed her heart rate in a short interval where Poseidon magnified her coefficient in high amplitude, after being inseminated in a tempered state and gifted as a Super Goddess. Kaitelka in nativity in the transversal valleys sailed in the air atmospheres of Hyperdisis, and she was always seen in the company of Leiak; the omnipresent and vague spirit of the watery ductile dancer, living on the liquefied element with his astringent slimy chin..., seeing him with his grotesque back-breaking swampy lines between knuckles, and hedges of tricks collected before the first station, in one of the first of the three Remaining nights before reaching Joshua de Piedra del Horcondising volcano, that upset her heart rate in a brief interval where Poseidon magnified her coefficient in high amplitude, after being inseminated in a moderate state and gifted as a Super Goddess. About seven hundred meters high she becomes Kaitelka Down godmother, adding the psychic chromosome twenty-two that contracts in the connection with Vernarth, in the extravagant massifs when in the autumn afternoons they collect Ceratocystis fagacearum Fungi, and irradiating them with insects such as the borers. When   Kaitelka recovers its chromosome by detraction in the natural selection of Trisomy, express is spilling on the dry and gelatinous Laurus leaves of all its dead cells, which are promptly seeped from the retracted membranes in frank adhesion, causing regeneration of the disease. After wanderings and ringed symptoms of lesson in the atmosphere of the ecstatic Horcondising, the wooly will be magnanimous and challenged from the chromosome spilled in the emulsion, is contained in the alpha proteins in the transverted Vernarth genome, as a warned whole and abundantly diploid, before reaching the lethal processes of reciprocal adversity, both as a zoo-anthropoid or a triple zoo-anthropoid-botanical effect. Pre-Existing Kaitelka Down with forty-two chromosomes (22 pairs) and the Lepidoptera Agrodiaetus (134 pairs), in its haploid, that is, half remains vitalizing between two species of the sub-mythological world, and in its psychic cellular compound, and later implant it in germ cells for the effect of Venarthian ambivalent psychic transmission and vice versa. By discard, there are four fewer chromosomes than the hommo sapiens and 222 less than the Lepidoptera Agrodiaetus, for a meta sense of flourishing with the power of Poseidon, brother of Zeus, Meta sense and discernment, encephalic they will be cogitated by conscious where their sensory cognitive is interrupted, towards an unconscious through the photons of hypocaloric temperature, to define in the prehistoric psychological memory of their psychic, more than random brain, coexisting of habeas corpus content and remote brain energy, before the magistracy and power of Poseidon that confines him. Graduated from southern impassable seclusion, their memory is isolated in their E-Cloud. Namely; stored in electromagnetic and electrophysiological stimuli, incontinent and weighted in the square miles of floating Poseidon outbursts, in the category of super cetacean down, with only four meager chromosomes from the remnants of the human procedural genome. The trisomy field, On the fourth of August of the year of the Lord, 1617, when Klauss Rittke was cleaning the main stained glass window of the Cathedral of Avignon, he heard heated dialogues between a Friar and a Gentleman, who was once an assistant to the clergy. Klauss could come closer and listen to their conversation more clearly, until the Friar Andrés Panguiette, babbling, demanded of Raymond Bragasse indulgence or one or the other. (Compendium of Marielle Quentinnais). Relating in its narrative evolution, about some Albigenses of this work set in Avignon, time of the Antipopes, crossing with the psychic waves that have just been mentioned, and of prophecies of who precisely Guillaume Bélibaste was born into a Cathar family. Having noted that 1321 in 296 years apart from Marielle Quentinnais, it takes place in Carcassonne on the same day as Bélibaste was executed, given his licentious life breaking Cathar dogmas, incriminating himself with civilians from the region, marrying women in exile, etc., was condemned by the Holy Inquisition, where many were purged for the sole fact of holding biblical books in their abode. Among the flames of his bonfire the prophecy of the laurel will be homologated, whose shadow will fall on the centuries to come. Note the coincidence 3, 700 years ago, where the first signs of life were appreciated on our planet and in the Hylates Forest in Cyprus (700, 000 thousand souls) in the imprint that unifies the Christian scrolls, blowing gold dust on Walekiria's hair..., and being liberated, as a tantric body of physicality. No one spoke, not even the 700, 000 thousand souls who also claimed to be liberated (Vernarth, page 313 - paragraph 2). And finally the seventh portion of the sea, with Poseidon. Here the Psychic numeral of Vernarth and Kaitelka coincide, who appears with the laurel of Guillaume de Bélibaste after almost seven hundred years, facing the unification of the prophecy of the Laurel, whose shadow will hover over the centuries to come. Templars, perfect bone Hommes and Cathars meet, in this historical feat, through the secret path safe from traitors and conspirators thanks to the most surprising allies. Bélibaste's fast-paced story will allow us to get closer to the most unknown ceremonies and rituals of his confession, showing us his revelations in the flames and turning green in the Laurel of 1321 in sync with 2021. Given the little and nothing that exists of the revealing enthronement and the psychic environment, it should be noted that historical facts fly like pollen, with the waves in their same vibrations of the aeolian autogyro. This entails physical vibrational material, which is in every corner of existentialism, without beginning or end, only rewinding through the infinite axon of karma and samskara, for physical-ecological convulsed means and intermediates, in revealing semblances of the primitive psychic field before us, like the Aspís Koilé, as a shield or as an omnidirectional parabolic antenna, bringing us events after events that strangely interchange phases, and intertwined efforts over time in quantum physics and subsequent biophysical changes in the genome chain, especially in its Psychic Trisomy.

to be continued...

One of the sweetest Greek gods out there;
a soul so kind and rare.
What he lacks in physical beauty,
he more than made up with talents and loyalty.
Zeus and Hera threw him down the mountain
but he's fated to be an Olympian.

Let me tell you a thing or two
about his determination and skills too.
Faithful and love you, he will.
He may not say it but he'll show it with his blacksmith skill.
Working hard day and night;
to make you a gift like Apollo's Sun, that bright.
Made out of stars, so massive you like.
He handpicks the best ones for luck.
Forged in the fire with the greatest details,
hammered with perfection, just like in the old tales.

Why must they turn away for he is ugly
when he made you weapons that made mortals flee?
O' Aphrodite, don't you run with Ares tonight.
Remember how your husband's gift locked you tight.
Hephaestus is kind and forgiving
but with his gifted hands, looks can be deceiving.

-m.b

IV. TO HERMES (582 lines)

(ll. 1-29) Muse, sing of Hermes, the son of Zeus and Maia, lord
of Cyllene and Arcadia rich in flocks, the luck-bringing
messenger of the immortals whom Maia bare, the rich-tressed
nymph, when she was joined in love with Zeus, -- a shy goddess,
for she avoided the company of the blessed gods, and lived within
a deep, shady cave.  There the son of Cronos used to lie with the
rich-tressed nymph, unseen by deathless gods and mortal men, at
dead of night while sweet sleep should hold white-armed Hera
fast.  And when the purpose of great Zeus was fixed in heaven,
she was delivered and a notable thing was come to pass.  For then
she bare a son, of many shifts, blandly cunning, a robber, a
cattle driver, a bringer of dreams, a watcher by night, a thief
at the gates, one who was soon to show forth wonderful deeds
among the deathless gods.  Born with the dawning, at mid-day he
played on the lyre, and in the evening he stole the cattle of
far-shooting Apollo on the fourth day of the month; for on that
day queenly Maia bare him.  So soon as he had leaped from his
mother's heavenly womb, he lay not long waiting in his holy
cradle, but he sprang up and sought the oxen of Apollo.  But as
he stepped over the threshold of the high-roofed cave, he found a
tortoise there and gained endless delight.  For it was Hermes who
first made the tortoise a singer.  The creature fell in his way
at the courtyard gate, where it was feeding on the rich grass
before the dwelling, waddling along.  When be saw it, the luck-
bringing son of Zeus laughed and said:

(ll. 30-38) 'An omen of great luck for me so soon!  I do not
slight it.  Hail, comrade of the feast, lovely in shape, sounding
at the dance!  With joy I meet you!  Where got you that rich gaud
for covering, that spangled shell -- a tortoise living in the
mountains?  But I will take and carry you within: you shall help
me and I will do you no disgrace, though first of all you must
profit me.  It is better to be at home: harm may come out of
doors.  Living, you shall be a spell against mischievous
witchcraft (13); but if you die, then you shall make sweetest
song.

(ll. 39-61) Thus speaking, he took up the tortoise in both hands
and went back into the house carrying his charming toy.  Then he
cut off its limbs and scooped out the marrow of the mountain-
tortoise with a scoop of grey iron.  As a swift thought darts
through the heart of a man when thronging cares haunt him, or as
bright glances flash from the eye, so glorious Hermes planned
both thought and deed at once.  He cut stalks of reed to measure
and fixed them, fastening their ends across the back and through
the shell of the tortoise, and then stretched ox hide all over it
by his skill.  Also he put in the horns and fitted a cross-piece
upon the two of them, and stretched seven strings of sheep-gut.
But when he had made it he proved each string in turn with the
key, as he held the lovely thing.  At the touch of his hand it
sounded marvellously; and, as he tried it, the god sang sweet
random snatches, even as youths bandy taunts at festivals.  He
sang of Zeus the son of Cronos and neat-shod Maia, the converse
which they had before in the comradeship of love, telling all the
glorious tale of his own begetting.  He celebrated, too, the
handmaids of the nymph, and her bright home, and the tripods all
about the house, and the abundant cauldrons.

(ll. 62-67) But while he was singing of all these, his heart was
bent on other matters.  And he took the hollow lyre and laid it
in his sacred cradle, and sprang from the sweet-smelling hall to
a watch-place, pondering sheet trickery in his heart -- deeds
such as knavish folk pursue in the dark night-time; for he longed
to taste flesh.

(ll. 68-86) The Sun was going down beneath the earth towards
Ocean with his horses and chariot when Hermes came hurrying to
the shadowy mountains of Pieria, where the divine cattle of the
blessed gods had their steads and grazed the pleasant, unmown
meadows.  Of these the Son of Maia, the sharp-eyed slayer of
Argus then cut off from the herd fifty loud-lowing kine, and
drove them straggling-wise across a sandy place, turning their
hoof-prints aside.  Also, he bethought him of a crafty ruse and
reversed the marks of their hoofs, making the front behind and
the hind before, while he himself walked the other way (14).
Then he wove sandals with wicker-work by the sand of the sea,
wonderful things, unthought of, unimagined; for he mixed together
tamarisk and myrtle-twigs, fastening together an armful of their
fresh, young wood, and tied them, leaves and all securely under
his feet as light sandals.  The brushwood the glorious Slayer of
Argus plucked in Pieria as he was preparing for his journey,
making shift (15) as one making haste for a long journey.

(ll. 87-89) But an old man tilling his flowering vineyard saw him
as he was hurrying down the plain through grassy Onchestus.  So
the Son of Maia began and said to him:

(ll. 90-93) 'Old man, digging about your vines with bowed
shoulders, surely you shall have much wine when all these bear
fruit, if you obey me and strictly remember not to have seen what
you have seen, and not to have heard what you have heard, and to
keep silent when nothing of your own is harmed.'

(ll. 94-114) When he had said this much, he hurried the strong
cattle on together: through many shadowy mountains and echoing
gorges and flowery plains glorious Hermes drove them.  And now
the divine night, his dark ally, was mostly passed, and dawn that
sets folk to work was quickly coming on, while bright Selene,
daughter of the lord Pallas, Megamedes' son, had just climbed her
watch-post, when the strong Son of Zeus drove the wide-browed
cattle of Phoebus Apollo to the river Alpheus.  And they came
unwearied to the high-roofed byres and the drinking-troughs that
were before the noble meadow.  Then, after he had well-fed the
loud-bellowing cattle with fodder and driven them into the byre,
close-packed and chewing lotus and began to seek the art of fire.

He chose a stout laurel branch and trimmed it with the knife....
((LACUNA)) (16)
....held firmly in his hand: and the hot smoke rose up.  For it
was Hermes who first invented fire-sticks and fire.  Next he took
many dried sticks and piled them thick and plenty in a sunken
trench: and flame began to glow, spreading afar the blast of
fierce-burning fire.

(ll. 115-137) And while the strength of glorious Hephaestus was
beginning to kindle the fire, he dragged out two lowing, horned
cows close to the fire; for great strength was with him.  He
threw them both panting upon their backs on the ground, and
rolled them on their sides, bending their necks over (17), and
pierced their vital chord.  Then he went on from task to task:
first he cut up the rich, fatted meat, and pierced it with wooden
spits, and roasted flesh and the honourable chine and the paunch
full of dark blood all together.  He laid them there upon the
ground, and spread out the hides on a rugged rock: and so they
are still there many ages afterwards, a long, long time after all
this, and are continually (18).  Next glad-hearted Hermes dragged
the rich meats he had prepared and put them on a smooth, flat
stone, and divided them into twelve portions distributed by lot,
making each portion wholly honourable.  Then glorious Hermes
longed for the sacrificial meat, for the sweet savour wearied
him, god though he was; nevertheless his proud heart was not
prevailed upon to devour the flesh, although he greatly desired
(19).  But he put away the fat and all the flesh in the high-
roofed byre, placing them high up to be a token of his youthful
theft.  And after that he gathered dry sticks and utterly
destroyed with fire all the hoofs and all the heads.

(ll. 138-154) And when the god had duly finished all, he threw
his sandals into deep-eddying Alpheus, and quenched the embers,
covering the black ashes with sand, and so spent the night while
Selene's soft light shone down.  Then the god went straight back
again at dawn to the bright crests of Cyllene, and no one met him
on the long journey either of the blessed gods or mortal men, nor
did any dog bark.  And luck-bringing Hermes, the son of Zeus,
passed edgeways through the key-hole of the hall like the autumn
breeze, even as mist: straight through the cave he went and came
to the rich inner chamber, walking softly, and making no noise as
one might upon the floor.  Then glorious Hermes went hurriedly to
his cradle, wrapping his swaddling clothes about his shoulders as
though he were a feeble babe, and lay playing with the covering
about his knees; but at his left hand he kept close his sweet
lyre.

(ll. 155-161) But the god did not pass unseen by the goddess his
mother; but she said to him: 'How now, you rogue!  Whence come
you back so at night-time, you that wear shamelessness as a
garment?  And now I surely believe the son of Leto will soon have
you forth out of doors with unbreakable cords about your ribs, or
you will live a rogue's life in the glens robbing by whiles.  Go
to, then; your father got you to be a great worry to mortal men
and deathless gods.'

(ll. 162-181) Then Hermes answered her with crafty words:
'Mother, why do you seek to frighten me like a feeble child whose
heart knows few words of blame, a fearful babe that fears its
mother's scolding?  Nay, but I will try whatever plan is best,
and so feed myself and you continually.  We will not be content
to remain here, as you bid, alone of all the gods unfee'd with
offerings and prayers.  Better to live in fellowship with the
deathless gods continually, rich, wealthy, and enjoying stories
of grain, than to sit always in a gloomy cave: and, as regards
honour, I too will enter upon the rite that Apollo has.  If my
father will not give it to me, I will seek -- and I am able -- to
be a prince of robbers.  And if Leto's most glorious son shall
seek me out, I think another and a greater loss will befall him.
For I will go to Pytho to break into his great house, and will
plunder therefrom splendid tripods, and cauldrons, and gold, and
plenty of bright iron, and much apparel; and you shall see it if
you will.'

(ll. 182-189) With such words they spoke together, the son of
Zeus who holds the aegis, and the lady Maia.  Now Eros the early
born was rising from deep-flowing Ocean, bringing light to men,
when Apollo, as he went, came to Onchestus, the lovely grove and
sacred place of the loud-roaring Holder of the Earth.  There he
found an old man grazing his beast along the pathway from his
court-yard fence, and the all-glorious Son of Leto began and said
to him.

(ll. 190-200) 'Old man, weeder (20) of grassy Onchestus, I am
come here from Pieria seeking cattle, cows all of them, all with
curving horns, from my herd.  The black bull was grazing alone
away from the rest, but fierce-eyed hounds followed the cows,
four of them, all of one mind, like men.  These were left behind,
the dogs and the bull -- which is great marvel; but the cows
strayed out of the soft meadow, away from the pasture when the
sun was just going down.  Now tell me this, old man born long
ago: have you seen one passing along behind those cows?'

(ll. 201-211) Then the old man answered him and said: 'My son, it
is hard to tell all that one's eyes see; for many wayfarers pass
to and fro this way, some bent on much evil, and some on good: it
is difficult to know each one.  However, I was digging about my
plot of vineyard all day long until the sun went down, and I
thought, good sir, but I do not know for certain, that I marked a
child, whoever the child was, that followed long-horned cattle --
an infant who had a staff and kept walking from side to side: he
was driving them backwards way, with their heads toward him.'

(ll. 212-218) So said the old man.  And when Apollo heard this
report, he went yet more quickly on his way, and presently,
seeing a long-winged bird, he knew at once by that omen that
thief was the child of Zeus the son of Cronos.  So the lord
Apollo, son of Zeus, hurried on to goodly Pylos seeking his
shambling oxen, and he had his broad shoulders covered with a
dark cloud.  But when the Far-Shooter perceived the tracks, he
cried:

(ll. 219-226) 'Oh, oh!  Truly this is a great marvel that my eyes
behold!  These are indeed the tracks of straight-horned oxen, but
they are turned backwards towards the flowery meadow.  But these
others are not the footprints of man or woman or grey wolves or
bears or lions, nor do I think they are the tracks of a rough-
maned Centaur -- whoever it be that with swift feet makes such
monstrous footprints; wonderful are the tracks on this side of
the way, but yet more wonderfully are those on that.'

(ll. 227-234) When he had so said, the lord Apollo, the Son of
Zeus hastened on and came to the forest-clad mountain of Cyllene
and the deep-shadowed cave in the rock where the divine nymph
brought forth the child of Zeus who is the son of Cronos.  A
sweet odour spread over the lovely hill, and many thin-shanked
sheep were grazing on the grass.  Then far-shooting Apollo
himself stepped down in haste over the stone threshold into the
dusky cave.

(ll. 235-253) Now when the Son of Zeus and Maia saw Apollo in a
rage about his cattle, he snuggled down in his fragrant
swaddling-clothes; and as wood-ash covers over the deep embers of
tree-stumps, so Hermes cuddled himself up when he saw the Far-
Shooter.  He squeezed head and hands and feet together in a small
space, like a new born child seeking sweet sleep, though in truth
he was wide awake, and he kept his lyre under his armpit.  But
the Son of Leto was aware and failed not to perceive the
beautiful mountain-nymph and her dear son, albeit a little child
and swathed so craftily.  He peered in ever corner of the great
dwelling and, taking a bright key, he opened three closets full
of nectar and lovely ambrosia.  And much gold and silver was
stored in them, and many garments of the nymph, some purple and
some silvery white, such as are kept in the sacred houses of the
blessed gods.  Then, after the Son of Leto had searched out the
recesses of the great house, he spake to glorious Hermes:

(ll. 254-259) 'Child, lying in the cradle, make haste and tell me
of my cattle, or we two will soon fall out angrily.  For I will
take and cast you into dusty Tartarus and awful hopeless
darkness, and neither your mother nor your father shall free you
or bring you up again to the light, but you will wander under the
earth and be the leader amongst little folk.' (21)

(ll. 260-277) Then Hermes answered him with crafty words: 'Son of
Leto, what harsh words are these you have spoken?  And is it
cattle of the field you are come here to seek?  I have not seen
them: I have not heard of them: no one has told me of them.  I
cannot give news of them, nor win the reward for news.  Am I like
a cattle-liter, a stalwart person?  This is no task for me:
rather I care for other things: I care for sleep, and milk of my
mother's breast, and wrappings round my shoulders, and warm
baths.  Let no one hear the cause of this dispute; for this would
be a great marvel indeed among the deathless gods, that a child
newly born should pass in through the forepart of the house with
cattle of the field: herein you speak extravagantly.  I was born
yesterday, and my feet are soft and the ground beneath is rough;
nevertheless, if you will have it so, I will swear a great oath
by my father's head and vow that neither am I guilty myself,
neither have I seen any other who stole your cows -- whatever
cows may be; for I

l'amours dont sui espris...

  me and the moon cower,
me and the moon peer into the night,
from behind the cloud
from behind a puzzling thought...
me and the moon cower:
before the altar of the night...

well... i would never **** a fly...
at least i'd try...
the kingdom of insects states:
by some "consensus"
that the females are bigger
than the males...
i've heard it's not so with
mosquitos...

i couldn't **** a fly...
but when Monday's garbage collection
happens and i'm left dragging
an empty bin
into the garden to clean it...
i find... maggots at the bottom
of the pit...
still wriggling in the leftover juices
of meat and others...

carelessly like jerking off:
i pour some bleach into the cauldron...
sodium hypochlorite...
then some water for the foam...
the maggots disappear...
i wish them well...
but not much good could ever come
from drinking a corrosive salt...
alkaline implies corrosive salt...
well... i drowned some maggots in
alkaline...
but i very much care to have
a clean bin...

i ******* crocodiles and tears and tadpoles
into a tissue while
on the throne of thrones and send
them to: nowhere...
just before i take the no. 1 & no. 2
(no. 3 to ease up)...
then baptise myself in the shower...

summer will soon be almost over...
autumn will come
the proper fruits will start to fall...
i'll be making my wine...
it will take me 3 weeks or circa...
maybe 4... the apples will fall...
the pears too...
winter... when insects sleep...
as much as i might appreciate the copper-neck
suntan... i'll be happier to find that
the insects are sleeping: along with
the bears...

i rarely **** a fly... a mosquito, though?
each and every time...
if i were a zombie and a fly *******
a maggot-load onto me... i'd beg to digger...
well...
    i did't feel like killing this large
specimen of mosquito... it wasn't going to
bite me...
never mind...
i didn't feel like merely killing it...
i caught it be one leg...

i have two spider twins either side
of the door to my garden...
one was sleeping...
the other was awake...
how did i know?
the sleeping one curled up its legs
into a bud...
it wasn't awake to play piano with
its cobweb...

        so i pinched this one mosquito
by the leg and watched it frenzied...
trying to escape... my hand led it to the altar...
how quick the spider! how quick
the spider made a mummy of the would:
juiced up mushy meat!
i didn't **** it...
i just fed a garden spider...
a catch it couldn't otherwise catch...

i felt indifferent... more indifferent about
vegans than vegans feel: "differentiated"
from debating the need for milk...
eggs... never mind the meat... cheese...
i don't understand veganism on these three pillars...
milk (cream)... eggs... cheese...
i couldn't be a vegan...

vegetarianism: i can understand...
but... no eggs?! no... milk / cream?!
no... cheese?!
        get out of 'ere!

       maggots swimming in sodium hypochlorite...
or rather... dying in it...
but the prettier sight than killing a bothersome mosquito
was feeding it to a spider...
it almost felt like...
   feeding a cat sushi turkey ******* on
the end of the knife...

this song has nothing to do with the experience:
chevalier, mult estes guariz...
none!
why do i abhor Darwinism...
it... doesn't tease my vanity...
it just kills off history!
from ape to "somehow": now...
that's it!
   **** similis: the ape was known to the ancients...
but the ancients did ancient "things"
and didn't allow themselves to be swallowed
up by a ******* comparison!
metaphor! they would have settled for
a metaphor... but not a comparison!
a synonymous-ness!

Darwinism is right: nature abhors vacuums...
nothing in nature is to be ever wasted...
everything has a purpose...
if... somehow... it doesn't have a purpose:
it will... it will evolve... it will adapt...
but... Darwinism as... the prime idea...
the one & only source of the genesis of
"idea"? only in the anglophone world...
no where else will you hear
Darwinism so celebrated...
Hermes asked... why did Galileo overshadow
the findings of Copernicus?!
why did even William Burroughs undermine
Copernicus by staging a "fact" that...
oh the ancient Egyptians knew!
the ancient Greeks knew too!
but... no mathematics...
then some pope-****-smear of a Galileo
was the one with the telescope
"probing": proving the heliocentric model
most adequate...

one spider whispered to another:
find any cobweb: piano concertos in the desert?
no... me neither...
let's just wait for some of these sand-*******...
camel-jockeys to catch up...
we'll show them... mummification:
hey presto!

- and they did... how quickly that spider
launched into the mosquito...
rapping it up like a... nothing to be
beside the futures of food-stuff...
it felt...
well... not ignoble... a pride in a sense
of hierarchy...
the spider easts the mosquito...
it's really levelled ground in the insect
dominion...
i allow maggots to swim in sodium
hypochlorite...
i catch a mosquito by its leg
and feed it to a spider...
the spider does the mummification
ritual... the world balances itself out...

it's a strange sensation: it's hardly a feeling...
one gets feelings on a graveyard...
count the bones...
wake up... re-wake...
the fickle faculty of memory:
so prone to amnesia...
i abhor dreams.... therefore i dream none...
less Freudian ******* shrapnel....
less & less...

i need a mirror to take a selfie...
i need... the apparition of 3D space...
you can't revise QWERTY!
you can't improve it!

i can type without looking down
at the keyboard: here's to imitating the Liszt...
the Chopin...

eh?!
i didn't cite:  E... did i?
i included the surd of breath...
EH?!

ask the ******* Hebrews why we have concern
to begin to laugh...:
it's trapped in their definite article:
HA! SANTA!

           i'm here for only one thing...
beside thrilling it alive in Thailand...
or... recovering fractures in Europe...
someone... maybe one... or two...
have... stolen my identity...
                  sorry...
             garlic pickled in some red wine
will always go under the radar...
electric six's album should never have:
gat bar! bay bar!

   it's the 1980s and sade...
smooth operator....
             best kept feeling...
feeding a mosquito to a spider
rather than simply killing it...
like... the inversed... imploded...
ploy of game...

who needs tiger blood?
bluff?
i need... a mosquito...
a spider... a spiderweb... like a piano...
i need an awake spider...
the red wine is not to be...
necessarily... mixed with garlic...
although last time i heard:
infusing ren wine with three or four
teeth of garlic (nuggets?)
is a slimming elixir...

father SLiM? *******... yacht...
bogus crew...
feeding a mosquito to a spider...
death soon arrives... "tomorrow".

- still need the geocentric model when
reading the map... hell:
i need the flat earth perspective when
reading a map... i don't really care much
for the equator, the Greenwich meridian
when getting from A to B...
funny how geographic "algebra" works...
from point A to point B:
a round earth doesn't really help...
perhaps if i were sailing but even then...
a straight line...

Darwinism didn't really undermine
man's final vanity... according to Freud...
nor did Freud undermine another vanity...
Freud & Jung created the divided schematic
of what once man:
i wouldn't say man was Leibniz's pristine
monad: something indivisible...
but it was close: to be divided by memory
fickle faculty:
how it dries up through the churn of
pedagogy... so much strain on learning
2 x 2 = 4... a, b, c, d, e... f, g, h...
fair enough: to later rearrange into words...
but i don't appreciate the classical alphabet...
the genius behind QWERTY...
i type without looking down at the keyboard...
it's almost like: imitation of reading braille...

maybe the alphabet should be less: a, b, c...
it's not like the vowels are at the beginning
while the consonants follow...
it just doesn't make sense:
rigid...
i wonder what would happen if children
were taught the QWERTY alphabet sequence...

or... just remember all the letters:
it doesn't matter in which order you remember them...
just remember that there are 26 letters in the English
alphabet...

- it's so pointless just killing  mosquito...
a fly... hardly...
but a mosquito... just at the right time
when it inserts its needle and become a syringe...
that's the sweetest of moment...
lord of the flies? who is the lord of mosquitos:
didn't ha-shem eat up all the lesser
gods of the Levant... but somehow avoided
gobbling up the lord of mosquitos?
i'm conjuring up a deity the Hebrew deity
didn't gobble up into his pantheon...

what name... what name?!
to challenge a name like... Beelzebub?
Be'el'zee'bub...
proper pronunciation with
the apostrophes: intra-verbum...
just so you know...
who: hoo! i'm getting hot from all the cider
and whiskey... god... i'm gagging for
some absinthe... the moon is ripe!
it's full...
     i need some slimming elixir...
some red wine infused with garlic...
to keep the vampires away...

what will i name you: lord of mosquitos...
KOMAR... mosquito in western Slavic...
Darwinism doesn't bug my vanity...
i.e. it doesn't bother me...
it bothers me that it's a history eraser...
nothing from yesterday here on in...
in the anglosphere...
the monkey: mammon key "happened":
an oops! ****! hey presto!
deluxe! no one grieves for Robespierre...
i might...
like i might for the wild imaginings of
the Marquis...
               if only... i prefer prostitutes to these...
"free"... masculine prototypes of... ahem... "women"...
once the woe... once the woo of man...
now?!
i prefer prostitutes...
no need for dating: plus... if they're Turkish...
they like a beard... a hairy chest... a hairy
stomach...

i'll push this dagger into that crux of:
et tu... so far so far as it can be harnessed
collectively that i'm... passionate about...
not angry... bitter... pickling my emotions...
there's a gherkin for a heart if anyone is
willing...

lord of mosquitos: raba'albaeud...
well, i could make that apostrophe disappear...
but i'd only replace it with a diacritical marker
above the A... to imply: "a.a."...
i.e. that there are two... Siamese vowels...
but it wouldn't help the pronunciation...
let's see...

raba'albaeud vs. rabālbaeud...
            eh?          ha ha... "no" difference!
so much for everyone being... "literate"...
they read like they might eat...
i've been told i eat in a way that...
invites other people to eat...
so much for others... dictating pleasures
unattainable...
i was a dinner once... with school friends...
i was the only one who asked for
rare beef... everyone else...
doubly butchered their wants...
they wanted them well done...
beef? well done?!
oh i'm a snob at that...
IT'S NOT MINCED BEEF!
YOU NEED... JUICE!

i kept my mouth shut and ate happy...
so much for friends...
i.e. "friends"... people you spend a lot of time together:
it works in a pedagogic environment...
school's great...
you are ***** into their presence...
you have to have... work-around tactics...
bullies... brutes... nerds... teenage mothers...

the full moon: while everything is attired in:
quicksilver...
the full moon: skin-head BISCUIT...
while everything is attired in quicksilver!

too many vowels... too many vowels...
raba'albaeud...
i "think" i'll rename him...
phonetically, though: ra'ba'alba'ood...
although there's an E & an U instead
of the omega...

Lithuanian: U'ODAS: ooh... not you...
i need bitter... twice bitter than an IPA
Czech absinthe...
i need to see straight... wonky too!
i need my tongue to be aflame!
i need teeth made from iron!

- history has become less linear than it used
to be... it has begot an ouroboros
of repeated... thanks to journalism:
history used to be linear...
time has reached a year 0...
but there's no revision taking place...
don't shoot the messenger!
i'm looking for the name of the lord
of mosquitos...

it's a hard name to conjure:
even though you have all the tongues in the world
available on the palette...
i need bitter... Czech absinthe...
i want to feel: hot... as rot...

Latvian: not Estonian... i.e.:
not sääsk (saaaask):               ODU...
主 / オモ (omo-odu)... that's clearly pushing it...
       オヅ
it would be so much simpler to just **** a mosquito
rather than... purposively...
feeding it to a spider...
i would "feel" much better killing it...
than having fed it to the spider...

Napoleon might have added:
sure... they're literate... but literacy only arrives
as useful when the literate are bilingual...
what use do i have for these people
distract by letters...
what use for the priestly class...
since... their safeguard is... "missing"?

sweet amber... whether beer: gods' juices...
or simply... mead...
from the work around of Hephaestus....
safeguard these names of the gods...
before they disappear...
before the Czech absinthe becomes too
bitter... still drinkable... but hardly enjoyed...

"too many vowels"... the "argument" follows
suite... i'm red... hot... chilly-esque...
chasing zeppelins... chasing diacritic markers...
covert: how you might say:
SPIERDALAJ: DALAI LAMA....
  ARES... his son...
                  Hephaestus....

             while i'm burning!

                         pronoun verb
custard: ich arbeit...
all the nouns the world might allow...

butterfass...
                   i'm itching to pass by:
butterfaß.... consonants ought to have...
better... phonetic encoding symbols...
like TH and PH have to encapsulate F...

who needs buTTer when one Tao might
have... MITE vs. miGHT?!
two consonants coupled...
not another night in Posen...
please... not another night in Posen...

chasing
i don't want to be English so much....
too many troubles...
too many fictions...
i want to be inherently "biased"...
too many frictions...
  too many fictions...
chasing  Zeppelin....
     ditto: base... the Warsaw "boat":
about to... sink.

Sappho Translations by Michael R. Burch

These are Michael R. Burch's modern English translations of the immortal Sappho of ******, the great lyric poet who was called The Tenth Muse by her ancient peers. The other nine muses were goddesses, so Sappho was held in the very highest regard!



A short revealing frock?
It's just my luck
your lips were made to mock!
—Sappho, fragment 177, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Eros harrows my heart:
wild winds whipping desolate mountains,
uprooting oaks.
—Sappho, fragment 47, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



That enticing girl's clinging dresses
leave me trembling, overcome by happiness,
as once, when I saw the Goddess in my prayers
eclipsing Cyprus.
—Sappho, fragment 22, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Gongyla, wear, I beg,
that revealing white dress …
—Sappho, fragment 22, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Bed the bride with the beautiful feet,
or bring her to me!
—Sappho, fragment 103b, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



That hayseed ****
bewitches your heart?
Hell, her most beguiling art's
hiking her dress
to ****** you with her ankles' nakedness!
—Sappho, fragment 57, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



I long helplessly for love. Gazing into your eyes not even Hermione compares. Who is your equal? I compare you only to goldenhaired Helen among mortal women. Know your love would free me from every care, and keep me awake nightlong beside dewy deltas.
—Sappho, fragment 22, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Aphrodite, do you not love the windlike dances
of beautiful, apple-cheeked Abanthis?
—Sappho, fragment 301, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



I am an acolyte
of wile-weaving
Aphrodite.
—Sappho, fragment 12, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Sing, my sacred tortoiseshell lyre;
come, let my words
accompany your voice.
—Sappho, fragment 118, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



She keeps her scents
in a dressing-case.
And her sense?
In some undiscoverable place.
—Sappho, fragment 156, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Vain woman, foolish thing!
Do you base your worth on a ring?
—Sappho, fragment 36, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



May I lead?
Will you follow?
  Foolish man!
Ears so hollow,
minds so shallow,
never can!
—Sappho, fragment 169, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



With my two small arms, how can I
think to encircle the sky?
—Sappho, fragment 52, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



The black earth absorbed grief-stricken tears along with the interred sons of Atreus.
—Sappho, fragment 297, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Menelaus, son of Atreus, lies returned to the black earth, finally beyond agony.
—Sappho, fragment 27, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Gold does not rust,
yet my son becomes dust?
—Sappho, fragment 52, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Atthis, so charming in the bedroom, but otherwise hateful, proud and aloof, her teeth clicking like castanets.
—Sappho, fragment 87a, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



I sought the Goddess in your body's curves and crevasses.
—attributed to Sappho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Mnemosyne was stunned into astonishment when she heard honey-tongued Sappho, wondering how mortal men merited a tenth Muse.
—Antipater of Sidon, translated by Michael R. Burch



Mere air,
my words' fare,
but intoxicating to hear.
—Sappho, cup inscription, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



What cannot be swept
------------------------------------- aside
must be wept.
—Sappho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Pain
drains
me
to
the
last
drop
.
—Sappho, fragment 37, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Mother, how can I weave,
so overwhelmed by love?
—Sappho, fragment 102, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch


Spartan girls wear short skirts
and are brazen.
—attributed to Sappho, translator unknown



Someone, somewhere
will remember us,
I swear!
—Sappho, fragment 147, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



No droning bee,
nor even the bearer of honey
for me!
—Sappho, fragment 146, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



The moon has long since set;
the Pleiades are gone;
now half the night is spent
yet here I lie—alone.
—Sappho, fragment 168b, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Sappho, fragment 136
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

after Aaron Poochigian

Nightingale,
how handsomely you sing
your desire,
sweet crier
of blossoming spring.

2.
Nightingale, enticing-songed harbinger of spring. Sing!



Sappho, fragment 130
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Eros, the limb-shatterer,
rattles me,
an irresistible
constrictor.

2.
Eros, the limb-loosener,
rattles me,
an irresistible
constrictor.



Sappho, fragment 10
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I lust!
I crave!
F-ck me!



Sappho, fragment 93
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Gongyla, wear, I beg,
that revealing white dress
when you come,
so that desire surrounds you,
descending in circling flight as you dance
to the strains of Abanthis's lyre
while I compose hymns to your loveliness,
both of us stirred by your beauty
and that dress!
Wherefore I once prayed to Aphrodite: I want
and she reprimanded me.



Sappho, fragment 24
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Don't you remember, in days bygone,
how we did such things, being young?

2.
Remember? In our youth
we too did such reckless things.

3.
Remember how we did such things in our youth? Many lovely and beautiful things in the city of dangerous enticements! We lived face-to-face with great daring amid those who inflict pain. Daring even to believe in golden-haired, slender-voiced Love …




The fragment below seems to be one of the most popular with translators …

Sappho, fragment 145

If you're squeamish, don't **** the beach rubble.―Mary Barnard
If you dont like trouble dont disturb sand.―Cid Corman
Don't move piles of pebbles.―Diane J. Rayor
Don't stir the trash.―Guy Davenport
If you're squeamish don't trouble the rubble!―Michael R. Burch
Let sleeping turds lie!―Michael R. Burch
Leave every stone unturned!―Michael R. Burch
Roll no stones, let them all gather moss!―Michael R. Burch
do not move stones―Anne Carson



Sappho, fragment 33
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Golden-crowned Aphrodite,
don't be a glory-hog!
Share a little of your luck with me!



Sappho, fragment 133 (Wharton 133, Barnard 31)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Blushing bride, brimful of rose-petaled love,
brightest jewel of the Goddess of Paphos,
come to the bridal bed,
tenderly entice your bridegroom.
May Hesperus lead you starry-eyed
to stand awestruck before the silver throne of Hera,
Goddess of Marriage!

2.
Of all the stars the fairest,
Hesperus,
lead the maiden straight to her bridegroom's bed,
honoring Hera, the goddess of marriage.

3.
The evening star
is of all stars the brightest,
the fairest.



Sappho, fragment 160
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
I shall now sing skillfully
to please my companions.

2.
I shall sing these songs skillfully
to please my companions.

3.
Goddess,
let me sing skillfully
to please my companions.



Sappho, fragment 102 (Lobel-Page 102 / Diehl 114 / Bergk 90 / *** 87 / Barnard 12)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Mother, how can I weave,
so overwhelmed by love?

2.
Mother, how can I weave,
so overwhelmed by love?
Sly Aphrodite incited me!



Sappho, fragment 130
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
May the gods prolong the night
   —yes, let it last forever!—
as long as you sleep in my sight.

2.
I prayed that blessed night
might be doubled for us.



Sappho, fragment 123
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Just now I was called,
enthralled,
by golden-sandalled
dawn…



Sappho, fragment 22
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I bid you, Abanthis, grab your lyre
and sing of Gongyla, while desire
surrounds you. Sing of the lovely one,
how her clinging white dress excited you
as she whirled. Meanwhile, I rejoice
although Aphrodite once chided me
for praying … and yet I still pray to have her.



Sappho, fragment 23
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I long helplessly for love.
Gazing into your eyes not even Hermione compares.
Who is your equal?
I compare you only to goldenhaired Helen among mortal women.
Know your love would free me from every care, and keep me awake nightlong beside dewy deltas.



Sappho, fragment 78
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

… nor were we without longing together,
as flowers long to delight …



Sappho, fragment 44
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The Wedding of Andromache and Hector

The herald arrived from Cyprus, Idaios, the fleetfooted Trojan messenger, whose ringing voice announced the wedding’s immortal fame to all Asia: “Hector and his companions deliver delightful-eyed delicate Andromache over the salt sea, on ships from holy Thebes and eternal-shored Plakia, with many gold bracelets, fragrant purple garments, iridescent adornments, and countless silver cups and ivory.” As he spoke, Hector’s beloved father sprang joyously to his feet and the report soon reached Hector's friends throughout the sprawling city. Immediately the sons of Ilos, Troy's founder, harnessed mules to smooth-wheeled carriages as throngs of women and slender-ankled virgins climbed aboard. Priam's daughters came in royal carriages. Elsewhere bachelors harnessed stallions to their chariots. From far and wide charioteers rode like gods toward the sacred gathering. Everyone of one accord they set out for Ilion accompanied by the melodies of sweet-voiced flutes, reed pipes and clacking castanets. The virgins sang sacred songs whose silvery echoes brightened the heavens. Everywhere in the streets wine bowls and cups were raised in jubilant toasts. The fragrances of myrrh, cassia and frankincense mingled together, perfuming the wind. The older women cried aloud for joy and the men's voices rang forcefully, calling on the archer Paion Apollo, master of the lyre, as all sang the praises of godlike Hector and Andromache.



Sappho, fragment 132
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
I have a delightful daughter
fairer than the fairest flowers, Cleis,
whom I cherish more than all Lydia and lovely ******.

2.
I have a lovely daughter
with a face like the fairest flowers,
my beloved Cleis …



Sappho, fragment 295
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
I fluttered
after you
like a chick after its mother …

2.
I fluttered
after you
like a chick after its hen …

3.
I flew back like a chick to its hen.

4.
I flew back like a child to its mother.



Sappho, fragment 30
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Stay!
I will lay
out a cushion for you
with the plushest pillows …



Sappho, fragment 46
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My body descends
and my comfort depends
on your welcoming cushions!

From Herodian, according to Edwin Marion ***.



Sappho, fragment 140
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

He is dying, Cytherea, the delicate Adonis.
What shall we women do?
Virgins, rend your garments, bare your ******* and abuse them!



Sappho, fragment 168
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Alas, Adonis!



Sappho, fragment 55
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Lady,
soon you'll lie dead, disregarded,
as your worm-eaten corpse like your corpus degrades;
for those who never gathered Pieria's roses
must mutely accept how their memory fades
as they flit among the obscure, uncelebrated
Hadean shades.

2.
Lady,
soon you'll lie dead, disregarded,
as your worm-eaten corpse like your verse degrades;
for those who never gathered Pierian roses
must mutely accept how their reputation fades
among the obscure, uncelebrated
Hadean shades.

3.
Lady,
soon you'll lie dead, disregarded;
then imagine how quickly your reputation fades …
when you who never gathered the roses of Pieria
mutely assume your place
among the obscure, uncelebrated
Hadean shades.

4.
Death shall rule thee
eternally
now, my Lady,
for see:
your name lies useless, silent and forgotten
here and hereafter;
never again will you gather
the roses of Pieria, but only wander
misbegotten,
rotten
and obscure through Hades
flitting forlornly among the dismal shades.



Sappho, unnumbered fragment
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

All mixed up, I drizzled.



Sappho, fragment 34
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Awed by the Moon's splendor,
the stars covered their undistinguished faces.
Even so, we.

2a.
You are,
of all the unapproachable stars,
the fairest.

2b.
You are,
of all the unapproachable stars,
the brightest.

2c.
You are,
of all the unapproachable stars,
by far
the fairest,
the brightest―
possessing the Moon's splendor.

2d.
You are,
compared to every star,
by far
the fairest,
the brightest―
surpassing the Moon's splendor.

3.
The stars lose their luster in the presence of the waxing moon when she graces the earth with her silver luminescence.

4.
The stars, abashed, hide their faces when the full-orbed moon floods the earth with her clear silver light.

5a.
Stars surrounding the brilliant moon pale whenever she lights the earth.

5b.
Stars surrounding the brilliant moon pale whenever she silvers the earth.



Sappho, fragment 39
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We're merely mortal women,
it's true;
the Goddesses have no rivals
but You.



Sappho, fragment 5
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We're eclipsed here by your presence—
you outshine all the ladies of Lydia
as the bright-haloed moon outsplendors the stars.

I suspect the fragment above is about Anactoria aka Anaktoria, since Sappho associates Anactoria with Lydia in fragment 16.



Sappho, fragment 16
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Those I most charm
do me the most harm.

2.
Those I charm the most
do me the most harm.



Sappho, fragment 68a
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Apart from me they became like goddesses
in their unrestrained excesses.
Guilty Andromedas. Deceitful Megaras.



Sappho, fragment 62
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You lay in wait,
beautiful in your garments
beneath a sweet-scented laurel tree,
then ambushed me!



Sappho, fragment 154
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1a.
The moon rose and we women
thronged it like an altar.

1b.
As the full moon rose,
we women
thronged it like an altar.

1c.
Women thronged the altar at moonrise.

2.
All night long
lithe maidens thronged
at the altar of Love.

3.
Maidens throng
at the altar of Love
all night long.

4.
The moon shone, full
as the virgins ringed Love's altar …



Sappho, fragment 2
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Leaving your heavenly summit,
I submit
to the mountain,
then plummet.



Sappho, fragment 129
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
You forget me
or you love another more!
It's over.

2.
It's over!
Who can move
a hard heart?



Sappho, fragment 51
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
I'm undecided.
My mind? Torn. Divided.

2.
Unsure as a babe new-born,
My mind is divided, torn.

3.
I don't know what to do:
My mind is divided, two.



Sappho, fragment 78
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

… nor were we without longing together,
as flowers long to delight …



Sappho, fragment 68a
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Apart from me they became like goddesses
in their unrestrained excesses.
Guilty Andromedas. Deceitful Megaras.



Sappho, fragment 23
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I long helplessly for love. Gazing into your eyes not even Hermione compares. Who is your equal? I compare you only to goldenhaired Helen among mortal women. Know your love would free me from every care, and keep me awake nightlong beside dewy deltas.



Sappho, fragment 62
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You lay in wait,
beautiful in your garments
beneath a sweet-scented laurel tree,
then ambushed me!



Sappho, fragment 100
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

When the bride comes
let her train rejoice!



Sappho, fragment 113
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Bridegroom,
was there ever a maid
so like a lovely heirloom?



Sappho, fragment 19
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You anoint yourself
with the most exquisite perfume.



Sappho, fragment 120
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
I'm no resenter;
I have a childlike heart …

2.
I'm not resentful;
I have a childlike heart …

3.
I'm not spiteful;
I have a childlike heart …

4.
I'm not one who likes to wound,
but have a calm disposition.



Sappho, fragment 126
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
May you sleep, at rest,
on your tender girlfriend’s breast.

2.
May your head gently rest
on the breast
of the tenderest guest.

3.
May your head gently rest
on the tender breast
of the girl you love best.



Sappho, fragment 107
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Is there any good in maidenhood?

2.
Is there any synergy
in virginity?



Sappho, fragment 81
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Dica! Do not enter the presence of Goddesses ungarlanded!
First weave sprigs of dill with those delicate hands, if you desire their favor,
for the Blessed Graces disdain bareheaded girls.



Sappho, fragment 58
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1a.
I confess
that I love a gentle caress,
as I love the sun's ecstatic brilliance.

1b.
I confess
that I love her caresses;
for me Love blazes with the sun’s brilliance.

1c.
I love refinement
and for me Eros
blazes with the sun's beauty, brightness and brilliance.

2.
I love the sensual
as I love the sun's ecstatic brilliance.

3.
I love the sensual
as I love the sun's celestial splendor.

4.
I cherish extravagance,
intoxicated by Love's celestial splendor.



Sappho, fragment 127
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Assemble now, Muses, leaving golden landscapes!



Sappho, fragment 138
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Darling, let me see your face;
unleash your eyes' grace.

2.
Turn to me, favor me
with your eyes' indulgence.

3.
Look me in the face,
           smile,
reveal your eyes' grace …

4.
Turn to me, favor me
with your eyes' acceptance.

5.
Darling, let me see your smiling face;
favor me again with your eyes' grace.



Sappho, fragment 38
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
You inflame me!

2.
You ignite and inflame me …
You melt me.



Sappho, fragment 12
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I am an acolyte
of wile-weaving
Aphrodite.



Sappho, fragment 4
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

What can Sappho possibly offer
all-blessed Aphrodite?



Sappho, fragment 104a
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Hesperus, herdsman most blessed!,
you herd homeward the wayward guest,
herd sheep and goats back home to their rest,
herd children to snuggle at their mother's breast.



Sappho, fragment 105
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Like the quince-apple ripening on the highest bough,
which the harvesters missed, or forgot—somehow—
or perhaps just couldn't reach, until now.

Like a mountain hyacinth rarely found,
which shepherds' feet trampled into the ground,
leaving purple stains on an unmourned mound.

2.
You're the sweetest apple reddening on the highest bough,
which the harvesters missed, or forgot—somehow—
or perhaps just couldn't reach, until now.

3.
You're the sweetest apple reddening on the highest bough,
which the harvesters missed … but, no, …
they just couldn't reach that high.



Sappho, fragment 145
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Prometheus the Fire-Bearer
robbed the Gods of their power
and so
brought mankind and himself to woe …
must you repeat his error?



Sappho, fragment 169
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

May I lead?
Will you follow?
Foolish man!

Ears so hollow,
minds so shallow,
never can!



Sappho, fragments 156
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Your voice—
a sweeter liar
than the lyre,
more dearly bought
and sold,
than gold.

2.
Your voice?—
more melodious than the lyre,
more dearly bought and sold
than gold.



Sappho, fragment 100
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
She wrapped herself then in
most delicate linen.

2.
She wrapped herself in
her most delicate linen.



Sappho, fragment 57
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1a.
That country ***** bewitches your heart?
Hell, her most beguiling art's
hiking her dress
to ****** you with her ankles' nakedness!

1b.
That country ***** bewitches your heart?
Hell, her most beguiling art
is hiking her dress
to reveal her ankles' nakedness!

2.
That hayseed ****
bewitches your heart?
Hell, her most beguiling art's
hiking her dress
to ****** you with her ankles' nakedness!



Sappho, fragment 54
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Eros
descended from heaven
clad in his imperial purple mantle.

2.
Eros
descends from heaven
wearing his imperial purple mantle.



Sappho, fragment 121
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
As a friend you're great,
but you need a much younger bedmate.

2.
Although you're very dear to me,
please don't be silly!
You need a much younger filly.

3.
Although you're very dear to me
you need a much younger filly;
I'm far too old for you,
and this old mare's just not that **** silly.



Sappho, after Anacreon
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Once again I dive into this fathomless ocean,
intoxicated by lust.



The Legend of Sappho and Phaon, after Menander
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Some say Sappho was an ardent maiden
goaded by wild emotion
to fling herself from the white-frothed rocks of Leukas
into this raging ocean
for love of Phaon …

but others reject that premise
and say it was Aphrodite, for love of Adonis.



Sappho, fragment 140
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Phaon ferried the Goddess across:
the Goddess of Love, so men say
who crowned him with kingly laurels.
Was he crowned for only a day?



Sappho, fragment 105c
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Shepherds trample the larkspur
whose petals empurple the heath,
foreshadowing shepherds' grief.



Sappho, fragment 100
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The softest pallors grace
her lovely face.



Sappho, fragment 36
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
I yearn for―I burn for―the one I miss!

2.
While you learn,
I burn.

3.
While you try to discern your will,
I burn still.



Sappho, fragment 30
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Virgins, keeping vigil all night long,
go, make a lovely song,
sing of the love you abide
for the violet-robed bride.

Or better yet―arise, regale!
Go entice the eligible bachelors
so that we shocked elders
can sleep less than the love-plagued nightingales!



Sappho, fragment 122
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1a.
A willowy girl plucking wildflowers.

1b.
A willowy girl picking wildflowers.

2.
A tender maiden plucking flowers
persuades the knave
to heroically brave
the world's untender hours.



Sappho, fragment 125
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Love, bittersweet Dispenser of pain,
Weaver of implausible fictions:
     flourishes in prosperity,
     weeps for life's perversity,
     quails before adversity,
dies haggard, believing she's pretty.



Sappho, fragment 201
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Death is evil;
so the Gods decreed
or they would die.

2.
Death is evil; the Gods all agree.
For, had death been good,
the Gods would
be mortal, like me.



Sappho, fragment 43
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Come, dear ones,
let us cease our singing:
morning dawns.



Sappho, fragment 14
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Today
may
buffeting winds bear
all my distress and care
away.

2.
Today
may
buffeting winds bear
away
all my distress and care.



Sappho, fragment 69
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
I gladly returned
to soft arms I once spurned.

2.
Into the soft arms of the girl I once spurned,
I gladly returned.



Sappho, fragment 29
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Since my paps are dry and my barren womb rests,
let me praise lively girls with violet-scented *******.



Sappho, fragment 1
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Beautiful swift sparrows
rising on whirring wings
flee the dark earth for the sun-bright air …



Sappho, fragment 10
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Girls ripening for marriage wove flowers into garlands.

2.
Girls of the ripening maidenhead wove garlands.

3.
Girls of the ripening maidenhead wore garlands.



Sappho, fragment 94 & 98
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Listen, my dear;
by the Goddess I swear
that I, too,
(like you)
had to renounce my false frigidity
and surrender my virginity.
My wedding night was not so bad;
you too have nothing to fear, so be glad!
(But then why do I sometimes still think with dread
of my lost maidenhead?)



Sappho, fragment 114
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Maidenhead! Maidenhead!
So swiftly departed!
Why have you left me
forever brokenhearted?



Sappho, fragment 2
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch, after Sappho and Tennyson

I sip the cup of costly death;
I lose my color, catch my breath
whenever I contemplate your presence,
or absence.



Sappho, fragment 32
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
The Muses honored me by gifting me works.

2.
The Muses gave me their gifts and made me famous.

3.
They have been very generous with me,
the violet-strewing Muses of Olympus;
thanks to their gifts
I have become famous.



Sappho, fragment 3
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Stars ringing the lovely moon
pale to insignificance
when she illuminates the earth
with her magnificence.



Sappho, fragment 49
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You have returned!
You did well to not depart
because I pined for you.
Now you have re-lit the torch
I bear for you in my heart,
this flare of Love.
I bless you and bless you and bless you
because we're no longer apart.



Sappho, fragment 52
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Yesterday,
you came to my house
to sing for me.

Today,
I come to you
to return the favor.

Talk to me. Do.
Sweet talk,
I love the flavor!

Please send away your maids
and let us share a private heaven-
haven.



Sappho, fragment 94
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

There was no dance,
no sacred dalliance,
from which we were absent.



Sappho, fragment 152
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

… shot through
with innumerable hues …



Sappho, fragment 46
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You came and did well to come
because I desired you. You made
love blaze in my breast, thus I bless you …
but not the endless hours when you're gone.



Sappho, fragment 153
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

They call me the sweet-voiced girl, parthenon aduphonon.



Sappho, fragment 94
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You anointed yourself
with the most exquisite perfume.



Sappho, fragment 42
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
As their hearts froze,
their feathers molted.

2.
As their hearts grew chill
their wings grew still.

3.
Their hearts quieted,
they alighted.



Sappho, fragment 134
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Selene came to Endymion in the cave,
made love to him as he slept,
then crept away before the sun could prove
its light and warmth the more adept.



Sappho, fragment 47
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Eros harrows my heart:
wild winds whipping desolate mountains,
uprooting oaks.



Sappho, fragment 36
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Vain woman, foolish thing!
Do you base your worth on a ring?



Sappho, fragment 52
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

With my two small arms, how can I
think to encircle the sky?



Sappho, fragment 137
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Gold does not rust,
yet my son becomes dust?



Sappho, fragment 48
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You did well to come and I yearned for you.
Though I burned with desire, you cooled my fevered mind.



Mere air,
my words' fare,
but intoxicating to hear.
—loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Sappho, fragment 9
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Mere breath,
words I command
are nevertheless immortal.



Sappho, fragment 118
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Sing, my sacred tortoiseshell lyre;
come, let my words
accompany your voice.



My Religion
attributed to Sappho
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1a.
I discovered the Goddess in your body's curves and crevasses.

1b.
I found the Goddess in your body's curves and crevasses.

1c.
I sought the Goddess in your body's curves and crevasses.

2a.
My religion consists of your body's curves and crevasses.

2b.
My religion became your body's curves and crevasses.

2c.
I discovered my religion in your body's curves and crevasses.



Sappho, fragment 37
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Pain
drains
me
to
the
last
drop
.

2.
Pain drains me;
may thunderstorms and lightning
strike my condemners.



Sappho, fragment 147
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Someone, somewhere
will remember us,
I swear!



Sappho, fragment 146
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1a.
No droning bee,
nor even the bearer of honey
for me!

1b.
No buzzing bee,
nor even the bearer of honey
for me!

2.
Neither the honey
nor the bee
for me!



Sappho, fragment 168b
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1a.
Midnight.
The hours drone on
as I moan here, alone.

1b.
Midnight.
The hours drone.
I moan,
alone.

2a.
The moon has long since set;
the Pleiades are gone;
now half the night is spent
yet here I lie—alone.

2b.
The moon has long since set;
the Pleiades are gone;
now half the night is spent
yet here I sleep, alone.



Sappho, fragment 119
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
We brought the urn aboard the barge, inscribed:
This is the dust of Timas,
whom Persephone received, *****, into her bedchamber,
for whom her fellowmaidens in mourning
slashed their soft curls with sharpened blades.

2.
This is the dust of Timas, dead, *****,
whom Persephone took to her dark bed,
for whom her fellowmaidens, mourning,
hacked off their locks like sheep at a shearing.



Sappho, fragment 21
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A purple scarf shadowed your face—
a cherished gift from Timas,
sent from Phocaea.



Sappho, fragment 290
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Dancing rhythmically, with light feet,
the Cretan women thronged the altar,
trampling circles in the fine soft flowering grass.

2.
Dancing rhythmically, with light feet,
to the pulsating beat,
Cretan
women thronged the altar in their mass,
trampling circles in the fine soft flowering grass.



Sappho, fragment 128
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Come join us, tender Graces
and lovely-haired Muses,
in our ecstatic dances!



Sappho, fragment 93
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Our playmates are pink-ankled Graces
and golden Aphrodite!



Sappho, fragment 53
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Come, rosy-armed Graces,
Zeus's daughters,
in your perfection!



Sappho, fragment 111
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Raise the rafters, carpenters.
Hoist high the roof-beams!

***** Hymenaeus!

Here comes the bridegroom,
statuesque as Ares!

***** Hymenaeus!



Sappho, fragment 112
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Lucky bridegroom,
your wedding day has finally arrived
and your alluring bride is your heart’s desire!



Sappho, fragment 32 (Barnard 32)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Virginity!
Alas my lost Virginity!



Sappho, fragment 57
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Heavy-lidded Slumber, child of Night, claimed them.



Sappho, fragment 57a
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Aphrodite's handmaid, resplendent in gold,
Hecate, Queen of Darkness untold!



Sappho, fragment 63
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Last night, Cyprian,
you and I clashed (s)words
in my dreams.



Sappho, fragment 48
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Now I know why Eros,
of all the gods’ offspring,
is most blessed.



Sappho, fragment 68
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

That was then, this is now!
In those days my maidenhead was in full bloom,
then you …



Sappho, fragment 135
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Golden Persuasion, Aphrodite's daughter,
how you deceive mortals!



Sappho, fragment 88
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Why, Procne,
delicate swallow, daughter of Pandīon,
why do you weary me with tales of woe?



Sappho, fragment 287
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I once instructed Hero of Gyara, the fleetfooted.



Sappho, fragment 15
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Cypris, may she find you a harsh mistress,
Doricha, the ****!
Put an end to her bragging,
nor let her boast that she fooled him twice,
my brother's embezzler!

Doricha was a courtesan who allegedly caused Sappho's brother Charaxus to lose considerable wealth. Doricha was also known by the pseudonym Rhodopis, which means "rosy-cheeked."



Sappho, fragment 7
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Doricha commands arrogantly,
like young men.



Sappho, fragment 148
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A vagabond friendship,
a public blessing …
repent Rhodopis!



Sappho, fragment 138
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The beautiful courtesan Rhodopis,
lies here entombed, more fair
than when she walked with white lilies
plaited in her dark hair,
but now she's as withered as they:
whose dust is more gray?



Sappho, fragment 5
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Revered Nereids, divine sea-daughters, please grant that my brother may return unharmed,
his heart's desires all fulfilled,
and may he show his sister more honor than in his indifferent past …
But you, O august Kypris, please keep him from unbearable dooms!



Sappho, fragment 148
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Wealth unaccompanied by Character
is a dangerous houseguest,
but together they invite happiness.



Sappho, fragment 201
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Gold is indestructible.

2.
Gold is God's indestructible Child:
the One neither moth nor worm devours.



Sappho, fragment 66
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Ares bragged he'd drag forge-master Hephaestus off by sheer force!



Sappho, fragment 120
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Over fisherman Pelagon's grave his father Meniscus left creel and oar, relics of a luckless life.



Sappho, fragment 143
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

How golden broom brightens riverbanks!



Sappho, fragment 94
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You remind me of a little girl
I once assisted picking flowers.



Sappho, fragment 95
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Lord Hermes, you guide spirits to their final destination.
Now guide me, for I am despondent and wish only to die,
to see the lotus-lined shores of Acheron.



Sappho, fragment 150
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1
Cleis, daughter, don't cry!
Mourning is unbecoming a poet's household.

2.
For those who serve the Muses,
mourning is unbecoming.



Sappho, fragment 56
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Will any woman
born under the sun
ever match your art?

2.
No woman
born under the sun
will ever have your wisdom.



Sappho, fragment 135
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Erinna, why does darkwinged Procne, King Pandion's daughter, beckon?



Sappho, fragment 17
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Hear me, Queen Hera, as your delightful festival nears,
you to whom the sons of Atreus performed vows,
those dazzling kings who did such amazing things,
first at Troy, then later at sea.
And yet, sailing the sea-road to our island,
those mighty kings still could not attain it
until they had called on you and Zeus,
the god of seekers and beseechers,
and Dionysus, alluring son of Semele.
Now we too perform the ancient rites,
O most holy and most beautiful Goddess,
we throngs of virgins, young women and wives.
Please allow us to arrive safely at the shrine.



Sappho, fragment 86
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

In this quiet moment,
I beg a boon from Zeus,
the bearer of the aegis,
even as I implore, O Aphrodite,
the tenderness of your benevolent heart;
hear my prayer, as once before,
when, departing Cyprus,
you heeded my earnest cry
and chose not to be harsh.



Sappho, fragment 44a
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Golden-haired Phoebus was sired on Leto by the high-soaring son of Kronos. His sister, Artemis, swore a great oath to Zeus: “By your crown, I shall always be an ***** ****** hunting on remote mountaintops. Assent!” The father of the Blessed Ones nodded his consent. Now gods and mortals call her The ****** Huntress and Eros, limb-loosener, dare never approach her!



Sappho, fragment 168c
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Gaia, rainbow-crowned, garbs herself in myriad hues.



Sappho, fragment 101a
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Undaunted by summer ablaze
the cicada emits its high, shrill song.



Sappho, fragment 103
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Sing of the bride with shapely feet, fair as the violet-robed daughter of Zeus, Artemis. Let the violet-robed bride calm her bridegroom's anger. Come holy Graces and Pierian Muses, whose sweet-toned songs soothe the overwrought heart. Let the annoyed bridegroom complain to his companions as she redoes her hair, fiddles with her lyre, and tries on dawn-golden sandals!



Sappho, fragment 103b
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Bed the bride with the beautiful feet,
or bring her to me!



Sappho, fragment 141
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Hermes mixed ambrosia in a bowl,
then poured it for the gods
who, having lifted their cups, made libations,
then in one voice blessed the bridegroom.



Sappho, fragment 27
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Because you were once young and loved to dance and sing, come, think favorably of us and be gracious. You know we're off to a wedding, so quickly as possible please send the virgins away. And may the gods bless us here since there's no path yet for men to reach great Olympus.



Sappho, fragment 115
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Dear groom,
to whom
may I compare you?
To a slender sapling.



Sappho, fragment 103c
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
… remembering delightful Arheanassa,
her laughter lovely as any Lorelei's …

2.
… remembering delightful Arheanassa,
her laughter lovely as any water nymph's …



Sappho, fragment 76
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Fulfill?
At my age I'm just hanging on!



Sappho, fragment 45
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
As long as you desire, I do!

2.
As long as you command, I obey!

3.
As long as you will, I submit.

4.
As long as you want me, I'm yours.



Sappho, fragment 50
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A handsome man pleases the eyes
but a good man pleases.



Sappho, fragment 41
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

For you, O my Beautiful Ones,
my mind is unalterable.



Sappho, fragment 18
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Everyone extols my storytelling:
"better than any man's!"



Sappho, fragment 88
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Though you prefer not to get carried away
and may imagine someone sweeter to behold,
someone who may yet say "Yes!"
still I will love you as long as there's breath in me,
swallowing the bitter,
ever the faithful lover.



Sappho, fragment 158
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

When anger floods your chest,
best to still a reckless tongue.



Sappho, fragment 129
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

They say Sappho's sweetest utterance
Was the hymeneal hymn of Love.



Sappho, fragment 153
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Queen Dawn,
solemn Dawn,
come!



Sappho, fragment 26
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Why, Mistress Aphrodite,
*******! Why do you
fill me with such lust? Why
inflict such suffering on me?
When I prayed to you in the past,
you  never treated me with such indifference!



Sappho, fragment 132
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Love, the child of Aphrodite and heaven;
Sappho, of earth;
Who had the more divine birth?



In the following 101 short translations the fragment numbers are Lobel-Page unless otherwise noted. All translations are by Michael R. Burch and should be so credited if they are used in any way, shape or form.

I now, with all my heart, fully, as much as it is possible for me, blossom to see your lovely face, touching. (4)

Let's go ogle golden-armed Lady Dawn before our doom. (6b)

It's impossible to be happy and human; yet I still pray a share for myself, of happiness. (16a)

Even this pressed for time, tonight we can raise a toast to the stars. (18a)

Put on your finery and with any luck we'll make harbor — back to dry land, back to the black earth. (20)

Though I'm skilled in lament and trembling with wrinkle-skinned age, yet there is the chase. Strum your lyre and sing to us of violet-robed loveseekers, Abanthis! (21)

Left to our own devices, two pretty young things, we found our way to the bedroom. (25)

Menelaus, son of Atreus, lies returned to the black earth, finally beyond agony. (INCERT. 27)

Colorful Lydian sandals covered her feet. So beautiful! (39)

At your altar, unforgiving Mistress, I will sacrifice a white goat and offer libations. (40)

I and Archeanassa, Gorgo's wife … (42a)

Beauty brings peace when my mind is troubled. Come sit beside me, friends, for day draws nigh. (43)

Once fleeing, hounded and bitten by gods, you gave me a name, put fame in my mouth. (58a)

O darkwinged dream you soar on night's drafts to sleep with the gods, and I am in agony to sense such distant power for I expect to share nothing with the blessed. I would rather not be left with mere trinkets, yet may I have them all! (63)

Andromeda may have abandoned you, but I, Aphrodite, Queen of Cyprus, still love you, Sappho, as the sun illuminates everything, everywhere; even by the dewy banks of Acheron, I am with you. (65)

I come to join the harmonies of a joyful chorus: sweet-toned, clear-voiced. (70)

Aphrodite, goddess of sweet-sung desires, sits on her throne of blooms in the beautiful dew. (73)

Aphrodite, sweet-talking goddess of love, sits on her throne of blooms in the beautiful dew. (73)

Joy? What joy? You gave me nothing: though beautiful, always unsmiling. (77)

She was all hair, otherwise nothing. (80)

Mnasidika is more curvaceous than even our soft Gyrinno. (82a)

Wait here once again, because … I come! (84)

You enrich me, like listening to an old man. (85)

We, having left rumors behind, departed people in a frenzy, tearing out their hair. (87)

Atthis, so charming in the bedroom, but otherwise hateful, proud and aloof, her teeth clicking like castanets. (87a)

Though you caused my soul and my heart sorrow, here's a small truth: I will always say "I love you" with a true heart. (88a)

Persuasion, Aphrodite's fledgling, with her broad, arrogant wings, sped me to Gyrinno, then to graceful Atthis. (90)

Irana, you're the biggest pain I've ever met! (91)

… saffron-dyed Phrygian purple robes and rugs … (92)

Later Polyanaktidis takes the lyre, strums the chords till they vibrate softly, and yet the sound pierces bones and melts the marrow. (99a)

Sons of Zeus, come to your rites from wooded Gryneia, here to our oracle! Then let the ritual songs begin! (99b)

Expensive gifts, these scented purple headscarves Mnasis sent us from Phokaia. (101)

Gorgo took her many insignificant verses to Cyprus, to be admired by many. (103a)

******'s singers reign supreme! (106)

Lesbian singers out-sing all others. (106)

… a most beautiful, graceful girl … (108)

The doorkeep’s feet are seven fathoms long, fill five oxhides, and it took ten cobblers to strap his sandals! (110)

Groom, to whom can I fairly compare you? To a slender sapling. (115)

Rejoice, most honored bride and groom! Rejoice! (116)

May the bride rejoice and her groom rejoice. Rejoice! (117)

The newlyweds appeared at the polished entryway. (117a)

Hesperus, star of the evening! *****, god of marriage! Adonis-like groom! (117b)

She stunned us in / wet linen. (119)

I'm talented, it's true, / but you / Calliope, remain unrivaled. (124)

I now wear garlands, who once wove them. (125)

Come again, Muses, leaving the golden heavens. (126)

Andromeda had a fine retort: "Sappho, why did Aphrodite so favor you? Did you ****** her?" (133)

We once spoke in a dream, Cyprian! (134)

Nightingale, enticing-songed harbinger of spring. Sing! (136)

The gods alone are above tears. (139)

They've all had their fill of Gorgo. (144)

Nightlong celebration wearies their eyes, then closes them. (149)

Our eyes embrace the black sleep of night. (151)

… many colors mingled … (152)

Women thronged the altar at moonrise. (154)

A hearty "Hello!" to the daughter of Polyanax. (155)

Lady Dawn, arise, / flood night's skies / with cerise. (157)

Imperial Aphrodite said: "You and Eros are my vassals. (159)

Imperial Aphrodite! bridegrooms bow down to Her! kings are Her bodyguards and squires. (161)

You "see" me? With whose eyes? (162)

Oh, my dearest darling, never depart/ or you'll wreck my heart! (163)

Leto summons her son, the Sun. (164)

To himself he seems godly, to us a boor. (165)

Leda, they said, once discovered a hidden, hyacinth-blue egg. (166)

Whiter than eggs, your unsunned *******. (167)

She's fonder of children than cradlerobber Gello. (168a)

We ran like fawns from the symposium: me, Cleis and reckless Gongyla. (168d)

Destiny is from the Muses, / and thus I was destined to leave him / to become / Sappho, Mistress of Song. (168e,f)

Unknowing of evil, I was pure innocence. (171)

Eros, pain-inducer, desist! (172)

She grew like a trellis vine. (173)

Mighty Zeus, World-Holder! (180)

Little is learned with an easy passage, much by a hard. (181)

May I go, or must you? (182)

Eros gusting blew my heart to pieces. (183)

I live in danger of too much love. (184)

Men fell in love with my honeyed voice, but I fell for girls. (185)

Sappho: Let me be one of the Muses when I die! Aphrodite: Granted! (187)

Eros, story-weaver, never a happy ending? (188)

I was very wise, except in the ways of love. (190)

That girl grew curvy and curly, like celery. (191)

We raised golden goblets inlaid with ivory and toasted the stars. (192)

I once instructed Hero of Gyara, the fleetfooted runner. (287)

We collapsed, drenched in sweat on both sides. (288)

Dawn spilled down the high mountains. (289)

Trading rosy health for less heartache, I fled my girlish youth. (291)

Such a boy once drove his chariot to Thebes, while Malis spun his fate on her spindle. (292, Malis was a Lydian war goddess)

"Thorneater?" That doesn't offend irongutted Arcadians! (293)

Hecate, Aphrodite's golden-armored ally, Queen of the Underworld. (294)

Learn from Admetus to love the courageous and avoid cowards, who seldom show gratitude. (296)

The black earth absorbed grief-stricken tears along with the interred sons of Atreus. (297)

Nightingale, sing your song and I'll sing along. (298)

Aphrodite, my mind is troubled. I'm still your servant, but Atthis remains a headstrong child. (299)

As when before your light streamed like honey but I was in darkness still. (300)

She is lovely as before, but where now is Hope? (300a)

Aphrodite, do you not love the windlike dances / of beautiful, apple-cheeked Abanthis? (301)

Cyprian, how splendid your altar ablaze in blue, silver and gold. Yet you all the more amazing! (302)

The bride lovely as dawn's unfolding sky, the groom nearly as handsome. (303)

Cyprian, here we come, singing songs and offering libations! (304)

A graceful girl, shy as a fawn and as flighty. (305)

Glorious passions! Passions uproarious! (306)



Sappho, fragment 306a
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

O most revered Queen of Heaven,
Golden Aphrodite!

Blessed above all mortal women,
and blessed by them …

Goddess, come!

Aphrodite, most beautiful,
enter with your train of elegant attendants!

Arise now for me,
honeysweet Aphrodite!

Meet me with greetings holy and divine!

Be mine!

What ecstasies, O my Queen,
shall we revel in at midnight?



THE LONGER POEMS OF SAPPHO

Unfortunately, the only completely intact poem left by Sappho is her "Ode to Aphrodite" or "Hymn to Aphrodite" (an interesting synchronicity since Sappho is best known as a love poet and Aphrodite was the ancient Greek goddess of love). However, "That man is peer of the gods" and the first poem below, variously titled “The Anactoria Poem,” “Helen’s Eidolon” and “Some People Say …” are largely intact. Was Sappho the author of the world's first "make love, not war" poem?



"Some Say"
Sappho, fragment 16
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Warriors on rearing chargers,
columns of infantry,
fleets of warships:
some call these the dark earth's redeeming visions.
But I say—
the one I desire.

Nor am I unique
because she who so vastly surpassed all other mortals in beauty
—Helen—
seduced by Aphrodite, led astray by desire,
departed for distant Troy,
abandoning her celebrated husband,
deserting her parents and child!

Her story reminds me of Anactoria,
who has also departed,
and whose lively dancing and lovely face
I would rather see than all Lydia's horsemen, war-chariots
and columns of infantry parading in flashing armor.



Sappho, fragment 31
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

To the brightness of Love
not destroying the sight—
sweet, warm noonday sun
lightening things dun:
whence comes the Night?



Ode to Anactoria
Sappho, fragment 31
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

How can I compete with that ****** man
who fancies himself one of the gods,
impressing you with his "eloquence" …
when just the thought of basking in your radiant presence,
of hearing your lovely voice and lively laughter,
sets my heart hammering at my breast?

Hell, when I catch just a quick glimpse of you,
I'm left speechless, tongue-tied,
and immediately a blush like a delicate flame reddens my skin.

Then my vision dims with tears,
my ears ring,
I sweat profusely,
and every muscle twitches or trembles.

When the blood finally settles,
I'm paler and wetter than the limpest grass.

Then, in my exhausted madness,
I'm as dull as the dead.

And yet I must risk all, being bereft without you …



Ode to Anactoria
Sappho, fragment 31
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

To me that boy seems
blessed by the gods
because he sits beside you,
basking in your brilliant presence.

My heart races at the sound of your voice!
Your laughter?—bright water, dislodging pebbles
in a chaotic vortex. I can't catch my breath!
My heart bucks in my ribs. I can't breathe. I can't speak.

My ******* glow with intense heat;
desire's blush-inducing fires redden my flesh.
My ears seem hollow; they ring emptily.
My tongue is broken and cleaves to its roof.

I sweat profusely. I shiver.
Suddenly, I grow pale
and feel only a second short of dying.
And yet I must endure, somehow,

despite my poverty.



Sappho, fragment 31
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

… at the sight of you,
words fail me …



Sappho, fragment 31
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Your voice beguiles me.
Your laughter lifts my heart's wings.
If I listen to you, even for a moment, I am left stunned, speechless.



The following are Sappho's poems for Atthis aka Attis aka Athis …



Sappho, fragment 49
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
I loved you, Atthis, long ago …
even when you seemed a graceless child.

2.
I fell in love with you, Atthis, long ago …
You seemed immature to me then, and not all that graceful.

3.
I loved you, little monkey-faced Atthis, long ago …
when you still seemed a graceless child.

4.
I loved you Atthis, long ago,
when my girlhood was a heyday of flowers
and you seemed but an awkward adolescent.



Sappho, fragment 131
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
You desert me, Atthis,
as if you find me distasteful,
flitting off to Andromeda …

2.
Atthis, you forsake me
and flit off to Andromeda …



Ode to Anactoria or Ode to Atthis or Ode to Gongyla
Sappho, fragment 94
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

So my Atthis has not returned
and thus, let the truth be said,
I wish I were dead …

"Honestly, I just want to die!"
Atthis sighed,
shedding heartfelt tears,
inconsolably sad
when she
left me.

"How deeply we have loved,
we two,
Sappho!
Oh,
I really don't want to go!"

I answered her tenderly,
"Go as you must
and be happy,
trust-
ing your remembrance of me,
for you know how much
I loved you.

And if you begin to forget,
please try to recall
all
the heavenly emotions we felt
as with many wreathes of violets,
roses and crocuses
you sat beside me
adorning your delicate neck.

Once garlands had been fashioned of many woven flowers,
with much expensive myrrh
we anointed our bodies, like royalty
on soft couches,
then my tender caresses
fulfilled your desire …"



Sappho, fragment 96
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Our beloved Anactoria dwells in distant Sardis, but her thoughts often return to the life we shared together here, when she saw you as a goddess incarnate, robed in splendor, and loved to hear you singing her praises. Now she surpasses all Sardinian women, as, rising at sunset the rosy-fingered moon outshines the surrounding stars, illuminating salt seas and flowering meadows alike. Thus the delicate dew sparkles, the rose revives, and the tender chervil and sweetclover blossom. Now oftentimes when our beloved wanders aimlessly, she is reminded of gentle Atthis; then her heart assaults her tender breast with painful pangs and she cries aloud for us to console her. Truly, we understand the distress she feels, because Night, the many-eared, calls to us from across the dividing sea. But to go there is not easy, nor to rival a goddess in her loveliness.



The following translation is based on an imaginative translation by Willis Barnstone. The source fragment has major gaps.

Sappho, fragment 96
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

How can mortal women rival the goddesses in beauty? But you may have come closest of all, or second to only Helen! With much love for you Aphrodite poured nectar from a gold decanter and with gentle hands Persuasion bade you drink. Now at the Geraistos shrine, of all the women dear to me, none compares to you.



Sappho, fragment 92
translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

“Sappho, if you don’t leave your room,
I swear I’ll never love you again!
Get out of bed, rise and shine on us,
take off your Chian nightdress,
then, like a lily floating in a pond,
enter your bath. Cleis will bring you
a violet frock and lovely saffron blouse
from your clothes-chest. Then we’ll adorn
you with a bright purple mantle and crown
your hair with flowers. So come, darling,
with your maddening beauty,
while Praxinoa roasts nuts for our breakfast.
The gods have been good to us,
for today we’re heading at last to Mytilene
with you, Sappho, the loveliest of women,
like a mother among daughters.” Dearest
Atthis, those were fine words,
but now you forget everything!



Sappho, fragment 98
translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
My mother said that in her youth
a purple ribband
was considered an excellent adornment,
but we were dark
and for blondes with hair brighter than torches
it was better to braid garlands of fresh flowers.

2.
My mother said that in her youth
to bind one's hair in back,
gathered together by a purple plaited circlet,
was considered an excellent adornment,
but for blondes with hair brighter than torches
it was better to braid garlands of fresh flowers,
or more recently, to buy colorful headbands from Sardis
and other Ionian cities.
But for you, my dearest Cleis,
I have no iridescent headband
to match your hair's vitality!



Sappho, fragment 41
translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

For you, fair maidens, my mind does not equivocate.



Hymn to Aphrodite
by Sappho
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Immortal Aphrodite, throned in splendor!
Wile-weaving daughter of Zeus, enchantress and beguiler!
I implore you, dread mistress, discipline me no longer
with such vigor!

But come to me once again in kindness,
heeding my prayers, as you did so graciously before;
O, come Divine One, descend once more
from heaven's golden dominions!

Then, with your chariot yoked to love's
white consecrated doves,
their multitudinous pinions aflutter,
you came gliding from heaven's shining heights,
to this dark gutter.

Swiftly they came and vanished, leaving you,
O my Goddess, smiling, your face eternally beautiful,
asking me what unfathomable longing compelled me
to cry out.

Asking me what I sought in my bewildered desire.
Asking, "Who has harmed you, why are you so alarmed,
my poor Sappho? Whom should Persuasion
summon here?"

"Although today she flees love, soon she will pursue you;
spurning love's gifts, soon she shall give them;
tomorrow she will woo you,
however unwillingly!"

Come to me now, O most Holy Aphrodite!
Free me now from my heavy heartache and anguish!
Graciously grant me all I request!
Be once again my ally and protector!

"Hymn to Aphrodite" is the only poem by Sappho of ****** to survive in its entirety.



Sappho, fragment 2
translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Come, Cypris, from Crete
to meet me at this holy temple
where a lovely grove of apples awaits our presence
bowering altars
                            fuming with frankincense.

Here brisk waters babble beneath apple branches,
the grounds are overshadowed by roses,
and through their trembling leaves
                                                              deep sleep descends.

Here the horses will nibble flowers
as we gorge on apples
and the breezes blow
                                       honey-sweet with nectar…

Here, Cypris, we will gather up garlands,
pour the nectar gratefully into golden cups
and with gladness
                                 commence our festivities.



The Brothers Poem
by Sappho
translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

… but you’re always prattling about Kharaxos
returning with his ship's hold full. As for that,
Zeus and the gods alone know, so why indulge
idle fantasies?

Rather release me, since I am commending
numerous prayers to mighty Queen Hera,
asking that his undamaged ship might safely return
Kharaxos to us.

Then we will have serenity. As for
everything else, leave it to the gods
because calm seas often follow
sudden squalls

and those whose fortunes the gods transform
from unmitigated disaster into joy
have received a greater blessing
than prosperity.

Furthermore, if Larikhos raises his head
from this massive depression, we shall
see him become a man, lift ours and
stand together.



Sappho, fragment 58
translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Virgins, be zealous for the violet-scented Muses' lovely gifts
and those of melodious lyre …
but my once-supple skin sags now;
my arthritic bones creak;
my ravenblack hair's turned white;
my lighthearted heart's grown heavy;
my knees buckle;
my feet, once fleet as fawns, fail the dance.

I often bemoan my fate … but what's the use?
Not to grow old is, of course, not an option.

I am reminded of Tithonus, adored by Dawn with her arms full of roses,
who, overwhelmed by love, carried him off beyond death's dark dominion.
Handsome for a day, but soon withered with age,
he became an object of pity to his ageless wife.

And yet I still love life's finer things and have been granted brilliance, abundance and beauty.



And now, in closing, these are poems dedicated to the Divine Sappho:



Sappho's Rose
translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The rose is—
the ornament of the earth,
the glory of nature,
the archetype of the flowers,
the blush of the meadows,
a lightning flash of beauty.



Sappho’s Lullaby
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

Hushed yet melodic, the hills and the valleys
sleep unaware of the nightingale's call
as the dew-laden lilies lie
listening,
glistening …
this is their night, the first night of fall.

Son, tonight, a woman awaits you;
she is more vibrant, more lovely than spring.
She'll meet you in moonlight,
soft and warm,
all alone …
then you'll know why the nightingale sings.

Just yesterday the stars were afire;
then how desire flashed through my veins!
But now I am older;
night has come,
I’m alone …
for you I will sing as the nightingale sings.

I am Hephaestus,
Festering,
Alone in my home
Of infidelity. Pestering,
My goddess, my queen,
With pleas, that I may reach
And touch her beauty,
That my ears may hear her sing.
Hoping I could snake my way
Around her olive tree,
With the courage of Athene.
She's the amor in the air,
Armored by her disgusted stare.
And I'm ensnared. Tangled,
In her hair. Amongst dead roses,
And broken mirrors, I repair.
Mending what was never there.
Convincing myself I'm not impaired.

I am Hephaestus,
Festering,
In this forge.
I'm scorched,
By my heart's
Endless scourge.

-SLuR

Twelve Olympians, to rule as they choose.
Twelve Olympians, we'll start with Zeus.
God of sky, thunder, lightning, law.
Ruled the Olympians with the justice he saw.
Commonly referred to as the Father.
Next is Poseidon, God of Water.
"A tamer of horses and a saviour of ships,"
Said in one of Homer's hymns.
Next is Hera, Queen of the Gods, and of women.
Giving mothers a carriage, and marriage to men.
Next is Demeter, Goddess of Harvest, giving fertility.
Hades captured her daughter, Persephone, and her virginity.
Then there's Athena, Goddess of Wisdom.
Lept out of Zeus' head, and earned her throne in the kingdom.
Apollo is next, God of Music, Poetry, Light.
Also capable of bringing plague and plight.
Artemis, Goddess of Moon and Hunt, and Apollo's twin.
Guided mothers through childbirth, a sacred ******.
Also, beloved Aphrodite, Goddess of Love.
Lover of Ares, who favored battles and blood.
Only Hephaestus and Aphrodite were wed.
Fire, metalwork, art of sculpture he led.
Also, there's Hermes, a god bringing word.
Among other things, guide to the Underworld.
Finally, there's Hesta, Goddess of the Hearth.
Feeding families and serving the home with warmth.
Twelve Olympians, to rule the sky.
Twelve Olympians, give your memory a try.

SAPPHO'S POEMS FOR ATTIS AND ANACTORIA

Most of Sappho's poems are fragments but the first poem below, variously titled "The Anactoria Poem, " "Helen's Eidolon" and "Some People Say" is largely intact. Was Sappho the author of the world's first 'make love, not war' poem?

Some People Say
Sappho, fragment 16 (Lobel-Page 16 / Voigt 16)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Warriors on rearing chargers,
columns of infantry,
fleets of warships:
some call these the dark earth's redeeming visions.
But I say—
the one I desire.

Nor am I unique,
since she who so vastly surpassed all mortals in beauty
—Helen—
seduced by Aphrodite, led astray by desire,
departed for distant Troy,
abandoned her celebrated husband,
turned her back on her parents and child!

Her story reminds me of Anactoria,
who has also departed,
and whose lively dancing and lovely face
I would rather see than all the horsemen and war-chariots of the Lydians,
or their columns of infantry parading in flashing armor.



Ode to Anactoria or Ode to Attis
Sappho, fragment 94 (Lobel-Page 94 / Voigt 94)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

So my Attis has not returned
and thus, let the truth be said,
I wish I were dead...

'Honestly, I just want to die! '
Attis sighed,
shedding heartfelt tears,
inconsolably sad
when she
left me.

'How deeply we have loved,
we two,
Sappho!
Oh,
I really don't want to go! '

I answered her tenderly,
'Go as you must
and be happy,
trust-
ing your remembrance of me,
for you know how much
I loved you.

And if you begin to forget,
please try to recall
all
the heavenly emotions we felt
as with many wreathes of violets,
roses and crocuses
you sat beside me
adorning your delicate neck.

Once garlands had been fashioned of many woven flowers,
with much expensive myrrh
we anointed our bodies like royalty
on soft couches,
then my tender caresses
fulfilled your desire...'

Unfortunately, fragment 94 has several gaps and I have tried to imagine what Sappho might have been saying.



The following are Sappho's poems for Attis or Atthis...

Sappho, fragment 49 (Lobel-Page 49 / Voigt 49)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
I loved you, Attis, long ago...
even when you seemed a graceless child.

2.
I fell in love with you, Attis, long ago...
You seemed immature to me then, and not all that graceful.

(Source: Hephaestion, Plutarch and others.)



Sappho, fragment 131 (Lobel-Page 131 / Voigt 130)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You reject me, Attis,
as if you find me distasteful,
flitting off to Andrómeda...


Sappho, fragment 96 (Lobel-Page 96.1-22 / Voigt 96 / Diehl 98)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Attis, our beloved, dwells in distant Sardis, but her thoughts often return here, to our island, and how we honored her like a goddess, and how she loved to hear us singing her praises. Now she surpasses all Sardinian women, as, after sunset the rosy-fingered moon outshines the surrounding stars, illuminating salt seas and meadows alike. Thus the dew sparkles, the rose revives, and the tender chervil and sweetclover blossom. Now oftentimes when our beloved goes wandering abroad, she is reminded of our gentle Attis; then her heart assaults her tender breast with its painful pangs and she cries aloud for us to console her. Truly, we understand all too well the distress she feels, because Night, the many-eared, calls to us from across the dividing sea. But to go there is not easy, nor to rival a goddess in her loveliness.



Ode to Anactoria
Sappho, fragment 31 (Lobel-Page 31 / Voigt 31)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

How can I compete with that ****** man
who fancies himself one of the gods,
impressing you with his 'eloquence' …
when just the thought of sitting in your radiant presence,
of hearing your lovely voice and lively laughter,
sets my heart hammering at my breast?
Hell, when I catch just a quick glimpse of you,
I'm left speechless, tongue-tied,
and immediately a blush like a delicate flame reddens my skin.
Then my vision dims with tears,
my ears ring,
I sweat profusely,
and every muscle in my body trembles.
When the blood finally settles,
I grow paler than summer grass,
till in my exhausted madness,
I'm as limp as the dead.
And yet I must risk all, being bereft without you...



Ode to Anactoria
Sappho, fragment 31 (Lobel-Page 31 / Voigt 31)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

To me that boy seems
blessed by the gods
because he sits beside you,
basking in your brilliant presence.
My heart races at the sound of your voice!
Your laughter? ―bright water, dislodging pebbles
in a chaotic vortex. I can't catch my breath!
My heart bucks in my ribs. I can't breathe. I can't speak.
My ******* glow with intense heat;
desire's blush-inducing fires redden my flesh.
My ears seem hollow; they ring emptily.
My tongue is broken and cleaves to its roof.
I sweat profusely. I shiver.
Suddenly, I grow pale
and feel only a second short of dying.
And yet I must endure, somehow,
despite my poverty.



The following poems by Sappho may have been addressed to Attis or Anactoria, or written with them in mind…

Sappho, fragment 22 (Lobel-Page 22 / Diehl 33,36)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

That enticing girl's clinging dresses
leave me trembling, overcome by happiness,
as once, when I saw the Goddess in my prayers
eclipsing Cyprus.



Sappho, fragment 34 (Lobel-Page 34 / Voigt 34)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Awed by the Moon's splendor,
the stars covered their undistinguished faces.
Even so, we.



Sappho, fragment 39
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We're merely mortal women,
it's true;
the Goddesses have no rivals
but You.



Sappho, fragment 5
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We're eclipsed here by your presence—
you outshine all the ladies of Lydia
as the bright-haloed moon outsplendors the stars.

I suspect the fragment above is about Anactoria, since Sappho associates Anactoria with Lydia in fragment 16.



Sappho, fragment 2 (Lobel-Page 2.1A)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Leaving your heavenly summit,
I submit
to the mountain,
then plummet.

Sappho associates her lovers with higher elevations: the moon, stars, mountain peaks.



Sappho, fragment 130
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

May the gods prolong the night
—yes, let it last forever! —
as long as you sleep in my sight.



Sappho, fragment 102 (Lobel-Page 102 / Voigt 102)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Mother, how can I weave,
so overwhelmed by love?



Sappho, fragment 147 (Lobel-Page 147 / *** 30)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Someone, somewhere
will remember us,
I swear!

'From Dio Chrysostom, who, writing about A.D.100, remarks that this is said 'with perfect beauty.''―Edwin Marion ***



Sappho, fragment 10
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I lust!
I crave!
**** me!



Sappho, fragment 11 (*** 109)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You inflame me!



Sappho, fragment 36 (Lobel-Page 36 / *** 24 & 25)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
I yearn for―I burn for―the one I miss!

2.
While you learn,
I burn.

3.
While you discern your will,
I burn still.

According to Edwin Marion ***, this fragment is from the Etymologicum Magnum.



Sappho, fragment 155
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A short revealing frock?
It's just my luck
your lips were made to mock!

Pollux wrote: 'Sappho used the word beudos for a woman's dress, a kimbericon, a kind of short transparent frock.'



Sappho, fragment 156
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

She keeps her scents
in a dressing-case.
And her sense?
In some undiscoverable place.

Phrynichus wrote: 'Sappho calls a woman's dressing-case, where she keeps her scents and such things, grute.'



Sappho, fragment 47 (Lobel-Page 47 / Voigt 47)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Eros harrows my heart:
wild winds whipping desolate mountains,
uprooting oaks.

The poem above is my favorite Sappho epigram. The metaphor of Eros (****** desire)  harrowing mountain slopes, leveling oaks and leaving them desolate, is really something―truly powerful and evocative. According to Edwin Marion ***, this Sapphic epigram was 'Quoted by Maximus Tyrius about 150 B.C. He speaks of Socrates exciting Phaedus to madness, when he speaks of love.'



Sappho, fragment 130 (Lobel-Page 130 / Voigt 130)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Eros, the limb-shatterer,
rattles me,
an irresistible
constrictor.



Sappho, unnumbered fragment
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

What cannot be swept
aside
must be wept.



Sappho, fragment 138 (Lobel-Page 138)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Darling, let me see your face;
unleash your eyes' grace.

2.
Turn to me, favor me
with your eyes' indulgence.

3.
Look me in the face,
smile,
reveal your eyes' grace...

4.
Turn to me, favor me
with your eyes' acceptance.

5.
Darling, let me see your smiling face;
favor me again with your eyes' grace.



Sappho, fragment 38 (Incertum 25, *** 36)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I flutter
after you
like a chick after its mother...

From the 'Etymologicum Magnum' according to Edwin Marion ***.



In the following poem Sappho asks Aphrodite to "persuade" someone to fall in love with her. The poem strikes me as a sort of love charm or enchantment…

Hymn to Aphrodite (Lobel-Page 1)
by Sappho
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Immortal Aphrodite, throned in splendor!
Wile-weaving daughter of Zeus, enchantress and beguiler!
I implore you, dread mistress, discipline me no longer
with such vigor!

But come to me once again in kindness,
heeding my prayers, as you did so graciously before;
O, come Divine One, descend once more
from heaven's golden dominions!

Then with your chariot yoked to love's
white consecrated doves,
their multitudinous pinions aflutter,
you came gliding from heaven's shining heights,
to this dark gutter.

Swiftly they came and vanished, leaving you,
O my Goddess, smiling, your face eternally beautiful,
asking me what unfathomable longing compelled me
to cry out.

Asking me what I sought in my bewildered desire.
Asking, 'Who has harmed you, why are you so alarmed,
my poor Sappho? Whom should Persuasion
summon here? '

'Although today she flees love, soon she will pursue you;
spurning love's gifts, soon she shall give them;
tomorrow she will woo you,
however unwillingly! '

Come to me now, O most Holy Aphrodite!
Free me now from my heavy heartache and anguish!
Graciously grant me all I request!
Be once again my ally and protector!

'Hymn to Aphrodite' is the only poem by Sappho of ****** to survive in its entirety. The poem survived intact because it was quoted in full by Dionysus, a Roman orator, in his 'On Literary Composition, ' published around 30 B.C. A number of Sappho's poems mention or are addressed to Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love. It is believed that Sappho may have belonged to a cult that worshiped Aphrodite with songs and poetry. If so, 'Hymn to Aphrodite' may have been composed for performance within the cult. However, we have few verifiable details about the 'real' Sappho, and much conjecture based on fragments of her poetry and what other people said about her, in many cases centuries after her death. We do know, however, that she was held in very high regard. For instance, when Sappho visited Syracuse the residents were so honored they erected a statue to commemorate the occasion! During Sappho's lifetime, coins of ****** were minted with her image. Furthermore, Sappho was called 'the Tenth Muse' and the other nine were goddesses. Here is another translation of the same poem...



Hymn to Aphrodite
by Sappho
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Rainbow-appareled, immortal-throned Aphrodite,
daughter of Zeus, wile-weaver, I beseech you: Hail!
Spare me your reproaches and chastisements.
Do not punish, dire Lady, my penitent soul!
But come now, descend, favor me with your presence.
Please hear my voice now beseeching, however unclear or afar,
your own dear voice, which is Olympus's essence —
golden, wherever you are...
Begging you to harness your sun-chariot's chargers —
those swift doves now winging you above the black earth,
till their white pinions whirring bring you down to me from heaven
through earth's middle air...
Suddenly they arrived, and you, O my Blessed One,
smiling with your immortal countenance,
asked what hurt me, and for what reason
I cried out...
And what did I want to happen most
in my crazed heart? 'Whom then shall Persuasion
bring to you, my dearest? Who,
Sappho, hurts you? "
"For if she flees, soon will she follow;
and if she does not accept gifts, soon she will give them;
and if she does not love, soon she will love
despite herself! '
Come to me now, relieve my harsh worries,
free me heart from its anguish,
and once again be
my battle-ally!



Sappho, fragment 113
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

No droning bee,
nor even the bearer of honey
for me!


Sappho, fragment 113
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Neither the honey
nor the bee
for me!



Sappho, fragment 52
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The moon has long since set;
The Pleiades are gone;
Now half the night is spent,
Yet here I lie ... alone.



Sappho, fragment 2 (Lobel-Page 2 / Voigt 2)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Come, Cypris, from Crete
to meet me at this holy temple
where a lovely grove of apple awaits our presence
bowering altars
  fuming with frankincense.

Here brisk waters babble beneath apple branches,
the grounds are overshadowed by roses,
and through the flickering leaves
  enchantments shimmer.

Here the horses will nibble flowers
as we gorge on apples
and the breezes blow
  honey-sweet with nectar ...

Here, Cypris, we will gather up garlands,
pour the nectar gracefully into golden cups
and with gladness
  commence our festivities.


Sappho, fragment 58 (Lobel-Page 58)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Virgins, be zealous for the violet-scented Muses' lovely gifts
and those of the melodious lyre ...
but my once-supple skin sags now;
my arthritic bones creak;
my ravenblack hair's turned white;
my lighthearted heart's grown heavy;
my knees buckle;
my feet, once fleet as fawns, fail the dance.
I often bemoan my fate ... but what's the use?
Not to grow old is, of course, not an option.

I am reminded of Tithonus, adored by Dawn with her arms full of roses,
who, overwhelmed by love, carried him off beyond death's dark dominion.
Handsome for a day, but soon withered with age,
he became an object of pity to his ageless wife.



Sappho, fragment 132 (Lobel-Page 132)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
I have a delightful daughter
fairer than the fairest flowers, Cleis,
whom I cherish more than all Lydia and lovely ******.

2.
I have a lovely daughter
with a face like the fairest flowers,
my beloved Cleis …

It bears noting that Sappho mentions her daughter and brothers, but not her husband. We do not know if this means she was unmarried, because so many of her verses have been lost.



Sappho, fragment 131 (Lobel-Page 131)
loose translations/interpretations by Michael R. Burch

1.
You reject me, Attis,
as if you find me distasteful,
flitting off to Andromeda ...

2.
Attis, you forsake me
and flit off to Andromeda ...



Sappho, fragment 140 (Lobel-Page 140)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

He is dying, Cytherea, the delicate Adonis.
What shall we lovers do?
Rip off your clothes, bare your ******* and abuse them!



Sappho, fragment 36
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Vain woman, foolish thing!
Do you base your worth on a ring?



Sappho, fragment 130
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

May the gods prolong the night
—yes, let it last forever!—
as long as you sleep in my sight.



... a sweet-voiced maiden ...
—Sappho, fragment 153, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I have the most childlike heart ...
—Sappho, fragment 120, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

There was no dance,
no sacred dalliance,
from which we were absent.
—Sappho, fragment 19, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I love the sensual
as I love the sun’s ecstatic brilliance.
—Sappho, fragment 9, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I love the sensual
as I love the sun’s splendor.
—Sappho, fragment 9, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You anointed yourself
with most exquisite perfume.
—Sappho, fragment 19, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Awed by the moon’s splendor,
stars covered their undistinguished faces.
Even so, we.
—Sappho, fragment 34, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Sappho, fragment 138, loose translations/interpretations by Michael R. Burch

1.
Darling, let me see your face;
unleash your eyes' grace.

2.
Turn to me, favor me
with your eyes' indulgence.

3.
Look me in the face,
           smile,
reveal your eyes' grace ...

4.
Turn to me,
favor me
with your eyes’ indulgence

Those I most charm
do me the most harm.
—Sappho, fragment 12, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Those I charm the most
do me the most harm.
—Sappho, fragment 12, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Midnight.
The hours drone on
as I moan here, alone.
—Sappho, fragment 52, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Once again I dive into this fathomless ocean,
intoxicated by lust.
—Sappho, after Anacreon, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Did this epigram perhaps inspire the legend that Sappho leapt into the sea to her doom, over her despair for her love for the ferryman Phaon? See the following poem ...

The Legend of Sappho and Phaon, after Menander
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Some say Sappho was an ardent maiden
goaded by wild emotion
to fling herself from the white-frothed rocks of Leukas
into this raging ocean
for love of Phaon ...

but others reject that premise
and say it was Aphrodite, for love of Adonis.

In Menander's play The Leukadia he refers to a legend that Sappho flung herself from the White Rock of Leukas in pursuit of Phaon. We owe the preservation of those verses to Strabo, who cited them. Phaon appears in works by Ovid, Lucian and Aelian. He is also mentioned by Plautus in Miles Gloriosus as being one of only two men in the whole world, who "ever had the luck to be so passionately loved by a woman."

Sappho, fragment 24, loose translations/interpretations by Michael R. Burch

1a.
Dear, don't you remember how, in days long gone,
we did such things, being young?

1b.
Dear, don't you remember, in days long gone,
how we did such things, being young?

2.
Don't you remember, in days bygone,
how we did such things, being young?

3.
Remember? In our youth
we too did such reckless things.

Sappho, fragment 154, loose translations/interpretations by Michael R. Burch

1.
The moon rose and we women
thronged it like an altar.

2.
Maidens throng
at the altar of Love
all night long.


Even as their hearts froze,
their feathers molted.
—Sappho, fragment 42, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Your voice beguiles me.
Your laughter lifts my heart’s wings.
If I listen to you, even for a moment, I am left speechless.
—Sappho, fragment 31, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Sappho, fragment 57
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1a.
That country ***** bewitches your heart?
Hell, her most beguiling art's
hiking her dress
to ****** you with her ankles' nakedness!

1b.
That country ***** bewitches your heart?
Hell, her most beguiling art
is hiking her dress
to reveal her ankles' nakedness!

2.
That hayseed ****
bewitches your heart?
Hell, her most beguiling art's
hiking her dress
to ****** you with her ankles' nakedness!

3.
That rustic girl bewitches your heart?
Hell, her most beguiling art's
hiking the hem of her dress
to ****** you with her ankles' nakedness!



Sappho Translations by Michael R. Burch

These are Michael R. Burch's modern English translations of the immortal Sappho of ******, the great lyric poet who was called The Tenth Muse by her ancient peers. The other nine muses were goddesses, so Sappho was held in the very highest regard!



A short revealing frock?
It's just my luck
your lips were made to mock!
—Sappho, fragment 177, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Eros harrows my heart:
wild winds whipping desolate mountains,
uprooting oaks.
—Sappho, fragment 47, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



That enticing girl's clinging dresses
leave me trembling, overcome by happiness,
as once, when I saw the Goddess in my prayers
eclipsing Cyprus.
—Sappho, fragment 22, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Gongyla, wear, I beg,
that revealing white dress …
—Sappho, fragment 22, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Bed the bride with the beautiful feet,
or bring her to me!
—Sappho, fragment 103b, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



That hayseed ****
bewitches your heart?
Hell, her most beguiling art's
hiking her dress
to ****** you with her ankles' nakedness!
—Sappho, fragment 57, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



I long helplessly for love. Gazing into your eyes not even Hermione compares. Who is your equal? I compare you only to goldenhaired Helen among mortal women. Know your love would free me from every care, and keep me awake nightlong beside dewy deltas.
—Sappho, fragment 22, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Aphrodite, do you not love the windlike dances
of beautiful, apple-cheeked Abanthis?
—Sappho, fragment 301, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



I am an acolyte
of wile-weaving
Aphrodite.
—Sappho, fragment 12, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Sing, my sacred tortoiseshell lyre;
come, let my words
accompany your voice.
—Sappho, fragment 118, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



She keeps her scents
in a dressing-case.
And her sense?
In some undiscoverable place.
—Sappho, fragment 156, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Vain woman, foolish thing!
Do you base your worth on a ring?
—Sappho, fragment 36, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



May I lead?
Will you follow?
  Foolish man!
Ears so hollow,
minds so shallow,
never can!
—Sappho, fragment 169, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



With my two small arms, how can I
think to encircle the sky?
—Sappho, fragment 52, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



The black earth absorbed grief-stricken tears along with the interred sons of Atreus.
—Sappho, fragment 297, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Menelaus, son of Atreus, lies returned to the black earth, finally beyond agony.
—Sappho, fragment 27, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Gold does not rust,
yet my son becomes dust?
—Sappho, fragment 52, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Atthis, so charming in the bedroom, but otherwise hateful, proud and aloof, her teeth clicking like castanets.
—Sappho, fragment 87a, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



I sought the Goddess in your body's curves and crevasses.
—attributed to Sappho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Mnemosyne was stunned into astonishment when she heard honey-tongued Sappho, wondering how mortal men merited a tenth Muse.
—Antipater of Sidon, translated by Michael R. Burch



Mere air,
my words' fare,
but intoxicating to hear.
—Sappho, cup inscription, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



What cannot be swept
------------------------------------- aside
must be wept.
—Sappho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Pain
drains
me
to
the
last
drop
.
—Sappho, fragment 37, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Mother, how can I weave,
so overwhelmed by love?
—Sappho, fragment 102, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch


Spartan girls wear short skirts
and are brazen.
—attributed to Sappho, translator unknown



Someone, somewhere
will remember us,
I swear!
—Sappho, fragment 147, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



No droning bee,
nor even the bearer of honey
for me!
—Sappho, fragment 146, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



The moon has long since set;
the Pleiades are gone;
now half the night is spent
yet here I lie—alone.
—Sappho, fragment 168b, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Sappho, fragment 136
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

after Aaron Poochigian

Nightingale,
how handsomely you sing
your desire,
sweet crier
of blossoming spring.

2.
Nightingale, enticing-songed harbinger of spring. Sing!



Sappho, fragment 130
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Eros, the limb-shatterer,
rattles me,
an irresistible
constrictor.

2.
Eros, the limb-loosener,
rattles me,
an irresistible
constrictor.



Sappho, fragment 10
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I lust!
I crave!
F-ck me!



Sappho, fragment 93
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Gongyla, wear, I beg,
that revealing white dress
when you come,
so that desire surrounds you,
descending in circling flight as you dance
to the strains of Abanthis's lyre
while I compose hymns to your loveliness,
both of us stirred by your beauty
and that dress!
Wherefore I once prayed to Aphrodite: I want
and she reprimanded me.



Sappho, fragment 24
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Don't you remember, in days bygone,
how we did such things, being young?

2.
Remember? In our youth
we too did such reckless things.

3.
Remember how we did such things in our youth? Many lovely and beautiful things in the city of dangerous enticements! We lived face-to-face with great daring amid those who inflict pain. Daring even to believe in golden-haired, slender-voiced Love …




The fragment below seems to be one of the most popular with translators …

Sappho, fragment 145

If you're squeamish, don't **** the beach rubble.―Mary Barnard
If you dont like trouble dont disturb sand.―Cid Corman
Don't move piles of pebbles.―Diane J. Rayor
Don't stir the trash.―Guy Davenport
If you're squeamish don't trouble the rubble!―Michael R. Burch
Let sleeping turds lie!―Michael R. Burch
Leave every stone unturned!―Michael R. Burch
Roll no stones, let them all gather moss!―Michael R. Burch
do not move stones―Anne Carson



Sappho, fragment 33
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Golden-crowned Aphrodite,
don't be a glory-hog!
Share a little of your luck with me!



Sappho, fragment 133 (Wharton 133, Barnard 31)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Blushing bride, brimful of rose-petaled love,
brightest jewel of the Goddess of Paphos,
come to the bridal bed,
tenderly entice your bridegroom.
May Hesperus lead you starry-eyed
to stand awestruck before the silver throne of Hera,
Goddess of Marriage!

2.
Of all the stars the fairest,
Hesperus,
lead the maiden straight to her bridegroom's bed,
honoring Hera, the goddess of marriage.

3.
The evening star
is of all stars the brightest,
the fairest.



Sappho, fragment 160
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
I shall now sing skillfully
to please my companions.

2.
I shall sing these songs skillfully
to please my companions.

3.
Goddess,
let me sing skillfully
to please my companions.



Sappho, fragment 102 (Lobel-Page 102 / Diehl 114 / Bergk 90 / *** 87 / Barnard 12)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Mother, how can I weave,
so overwhelmed by love?

2.
Mother, how can I weave,
so overwhelmed by love?
Sly Aphrodite incited me!



Sappho, fragment 130
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
May the gods prolong the night
   —yes, let it last forever!—
as long as you sleep in my sight.

2.
I prayed that blessed night
might be doubled for us.



Sappho, fragment 123
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Just now I was called,
enthralled,
by golden-sandalled
dawn…



Sappho, fragment 22
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I bid you, Abanthis, grab your lyre
and sing of Gongyla, while desire
surrounds you. Sing of the lovely one,
how her clinging white dress excited you
as she whirled. Meanwhile, I rejoice
although Aphrodite once chided me
for praying … and yet I still pray to have her.



Sappho, fragment 23
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I long helplessly for love.
Gazing into your eyes not even Hermione compares.
Who is your equal?
I compare you only to goldenhaired Helen among mortal women.
Know your love would free me from every care, and keep me awake nightlong beside dewy deltas.



Sappho, fragment 78
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

… nor were we without longing together,
as flowers long to delight …



Sappho, fragment 44
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The Wedding of Andromache and Hector

The herald arrived from Cyprus, Idaios, the fleetfooted Trojan messenger, whose ringing voice announced the wedding’s immortal fame to all Asia: “Hector and his companions deliver delightful-eyed delicate Andromache over the salt sea, on ships from holy Thebes and eternal-shored Plakia, with many gold bracelets, fragrant purple garments, iridescent adornments, and countless silver cups and ivory.” As he spoke, Hector’s beloved father sprang joyously to his feet and the report soon reached Hector's friends throughout the sprawling city. Immediately the sons of Ilos, Troy's founder, harnessed mules to smooth-wheeled carriages as throngs of women and slender-ankled virgins climbed aboard. Priam's daughters came in royal carriages. Elsewhere bachelors harnessed stallions to their chariots. From far and wide charioteers rode like gods toward the sacred gathering. Everyone of one accord they set out for Ilion accompanied by the melodies of sweet-voiced flutes, reed pipes and clacking castanets. The virgins sang sacred songs whose silvery echoes brightened the heavens. Everywhere in the streets wine bowls and cups were raised in jubilant toasts. The fragrances of myrrh, cassia and frankincense mingled together, perfuming the wind. The older women cried aloud for joy and the men's voices rang forcefully, calling on the archer Paion Apollo, master of the lyre, as all sang the praises of godlike Hector and Andromache.



Sappho, fragment 132
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
I have a delightful daughter
fairer than the fairest flowers, Cleis,
whom I cherish more than all Lydia and lovely ******.

2.
I have a lovely daughter
with a face like the fairest flowers,
my beloved Cleis …



Sappho, fragment 295
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
I fluttered
after you
like a chick after its mother …

2.
I fluttered
after you
like a chick after its hen …

3.
I flew back like a chick to its hen.

4.
I flew back like a child to its mother.



Sappho, fragment 30
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Stay!
I will lay
out a cushion for you
with the plushest pillows …



Sappho, fragment 46
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My body descends
and my comfort depends
on your welcoming cushions!

From Herodian, according to Edwin Marion ***.



Sappho, fragment 140
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

He is dying, Cytherea, the delicate Adonis.
What shall we women do?
Virgins, rend your garments, bare your ******* and abuse them!



Sappho, fragment 168
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Alas, Adonis!



Sappho, fragment 55
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Lady,
soon you'll lie dead, disregarded,
as your worm-eaten corpse like your corpus degrades;
for those who never gathered Pieria's roses
must mutely accept how their memory fades
as they flit among the obscure, uncelebrated
Hadean shades.

2.
Lady,
soon you'll lie dead, disregarded,
as your worm-eaten corpse like your verse degrades;
for those who never gathered Pierian roses
must mutely accept how their reputation fades
among the obscure, uncelebrated
Hadean shades.

3.
Lady,
soon you'll lie dead, disregarded;
then imagine how quickly your reputation fades …
when you who never gathered the roses of Pieria
mutely assume your place
among the obscure, uncelebrated
Hadean shades.

4.
Death shall rule thee
eternally
now, my Lady,
for see:
your name lies useless, silent and forgotten
here and hereafter;
never again will you gather
the roses of Pieria, but only wander
misbegotten,
rotten
and obscure through Hades
flitting forlornly among the dismal shades.



Sappho, unnumbered fragment
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

All mixed up, I drizzled.



Sappho, fragment 34
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Awed by the Moon's splendor,
the stars covered their undistinguished faces.
Even so, we.

2a.
You are,
of all the unapproachable stars,
the fairest.

2b.
You are,
of all the unapproachable stars,
the brightest.

2c.
You are,
of all the unapproachable stars,
by far
the fairest,
the brightest―
possessing the Moon's splendor.

2d.
You are,
compared to every star,
by far
the fairest,
the brightest―
surpassing the Moon's splendor.

3.
The stars lose their luster in the presence of the waxing moon when she graces the earth with her silver luminescence.

4.
The stars, abashed, hide their faces when the full-orbed moon floods the earth with her clear silver light.

5a.
Stars surrounding the brilliant moon pale whenever she lights the earth.

5b.
Stars surrounding the brilliant moon pale whenever she silvers the earth.



Sappho, fragment 39
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We're merely mortal women,
it's true;
the Goddesses have no rivals
but You.



Sappho, fragment 5
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We're eclipsed here by your presence—
you outshine all the ladies of Lydia
as the bright-haloed moon outsplendors the stars.

I suspect the fragment above is about Anactoria aka Anaktoria, since Sappho associates Anactoria with Lydia in fragment 16.



Sappho, fragment 16
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Those I most charm
do me the most harm.

2.
Those I charm the most
do me the most harm.



Sappho, fragment 68a
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Apart from me they became like goddesses
in their unrestrained excesses.
Guilty Andromedas. Deceitful Megaras.



Sappho, fragment 62
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You lay in wait,
beautiful in your garments
beneath a sweet-scented laurel tree,
then ambushed me!



Sappho, fragment 154
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1a.
The moon rose and we women
thronged it like an altar.

1b.
As the full moon rose,
we women
thronged it like an altar.

1c.
Women thronged the altar at moonrise.

2.
All night long
lithe maidens thronged
at the altar of Love.

3.
Maidens throng
at the altar of Love
all night long.

4.
The moon shone, full
as the virgins ringed Love's altar …



Sappho, fragment 2
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Leaving your heavenly summit,
I submit
to the mountain,
then plummet.



Sappho, fragment 129
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
You forget me
or you love another more!
It's over.

2.
It's over!
Who can move
a hard heart?



Sappho, fragment 51
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
I'm undecided.
My mind? Torn. Divided.

2.
Unsure as a babe new-born,
My mind is divided, torn.

3.
I don't know what to do:
My mind is divided, two.



Sappho, fragment 78
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

… nor were we without longing together,
as flowers long to delight …



Sappho, fragment 68a
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Apart from me they became like goddesses
in their unrestrained excesses.
Guilty Andromedas. Deceitful Megaras.



Sappho, fragment 23
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I long helplessly for love. Gazing into your eyes not even Hermione compares. Who is your equal? I compare you only to goldenhaired Helen among mortal women. Know your love would free me from every care, and keep me awake nightlong beside dewy deltas.



Sappho, fragment 62
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You lay in wait,
beautiful in your garments
beneath a sweet-scented laurel tree,
then ambushed me!



Sappho, fragment 100
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

When the bride comes
let her train rejoice!



Sappho, fragment 113
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Bridegroom,
was there ever a maid
so like a lovely heirloom?



Sappho, fragment 19
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You anoint yourself
with the most exquisite perfume.



Sappho, fragment 120
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
I'm no resenter;
I have a childlike heart …

2.
I'm not resentful;
I have a childlike heart …

3.
I'm not spiteful;
I have a childlike heart …

4.
I'm not one who likes to wound,
but have a calm disposition.



Sappho, fragment 126
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
May you sleep, at rest,
on your tender girlfriend’s breast.

2.
May your head gently rest
on the breast
of the tenderest guest.

3.
May your head gently rest
on the tender breast
of the girl you love best.



Sappho, fragment 107
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Is there any good in maidenhood?

2.
Is there any synergy
in virginity?



Sappho, fragment 81
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Dica! Do not enter the presence of Goddesses ungarlanded!
First weave sprigs of dill with those delicate hands, if you desire their favor,
for the Blessed Graces disdain bareheaded girls.



Sappho, fragment 58
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1a.
I confess
that I love a gentle caress,
as I love the sun's ecstatic brilliance.

1b.
I confess
that I love her caresses;
for me Love blazes with the sun’s brilliance.

1c.
I love refinement
and for me Eros
blazes with the sun's beauty, brightness and brilliance.

2.
I love the sensual
as I love the sun's ecstatic brilliance.

3.
I love the sensual
as I love the sun's celestial splendor.

4.
I cherish extravagance,
intoxicated by Love's celestial splendor.



Sappho, fragment 127
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Assemble now, Muses, leaving golden landscapes!



Sappho, fragment 138
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Darling, let me see your face;
unleash your eyes' grace.

2.
Turn to me, favor me
with your eyes' indulgence.

3.
Look me in the face,
           smile,
reveal your eyes' grace …

4.
Turn to me, favor me
with your eyes' acceptance.

5.
Darling, let me see your smiling face;
favor me again with your eyes' grace.



Sappho, fragment 38
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
You inflame me!

2.
You ignite and inflame me …
You melt me.



Sappho, fragment 12
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I am an acolyte
of wile-weaving
Aphrodite.



Sappho, fragment 4
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

What can Sappho possibly offer
all-blessed Aphrodite?



Sappho, fragment 104a
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Hesperus, herdsman most blessed!,
you herd homeward the wayward guest,
herd sheep and goats back home to their rest,
herd children to snuggle at their mother's breast.



Sappho, fragment 105
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Like the quince-apple ripening on the highest bough,
which the harvesters missed, or forgot—somehow—
or perhaps just couldn't reach, until now.

Like a mountain hyacinth rarely found,
which shepherds' feet trampled into the ground,
leaving purple stains on an unmourned mound.

2.
You're the sweetest apple reddening on the highest bough,
which the harvesters missed, or forgot—somehow—
or perhaps just couldn't reach, until now.

3.
You're the sweetest apple reddening on the highest bough,
which the harvesters missed … but, no, …
they just couldn't reach that high.



Sappho, fragment 145
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Prometheus the Fire-Bearer
robbed the Gods of their power
and so
brought mankind and himself to woe …
must you repeat his error?



Sappho, fragment 169
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

May I lead?
Will you follow?
Foolish man!

Ears so hollow,
minds so shallow,
never can!



Sappho, fragments 156
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Your voice—
a sweeter liar
than the lyre,
more dearly bought
and sold,
than gold.

2.
Your voice?—
more melodious than the lyre,
more dearly bought and sold
than gold.



Sappho, fragment 100
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
She wrapped herself then in
most delicate linen.

2.
She wrapped herself in
her most delicate linen.



Sappho, fragment 57
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1a.
That country ***** bewitches your heart?
Hell, her most beguiling art's
hiking her dress
to ****** you with her ankles' nakedness!

1b.
That country ***** bewitches your heart?
Hell, her most beguiling art
is hiking her dress
to reveal her ankles' nakedness!

2.
That hayseed ****
bewitches your heart?
Hell, her most beguiling art's
hiking her dress
to ****** you with her ankles' nakedness!



Sappho, fragment 54
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Eros
descended from heaven
clad in his imperial purple mantle.

2.
Eros
descends from heaven
wearing his imperial purple mantle.



Sappho, fragment 121
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
As a friend you're great,
but you need a much younger bedmate.

2.
Although you're very dear to me,
please don't be silly!
You need a much younger filly.

3.
Although you're very dear to me
you need a much younger filly;
I'm far too old for you,
and this old mare's just not that **** silly.



Sappho, after Anacreon
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Once again I dive into this fathomless ocean,
intoxicated by lust.



The Legend of Sappho and Phaon, after Menander
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Some say Sappho was an ardent maiden
goaded by wild emotion
to fling herself from the white-frothed rocks of Leukas
into this raging ocean
for love of Phaon …

but others reject that premise
and say it was Aphrodite, for love of Adonis.



Sappho, fragment 140
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Phaon ferried the Goddess across:
the Goddess of Love, so men say
who crowned him with kingly laurels.
Was he crowned for only a day?



Sappho, fragment 105c
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Shepherds trample the larkspur
whose petals empurple the heath,
foreshadowing shepherds' grief.



Sappho, fragment 100
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The softest pallors grace
her lovely face.



Sappho, fragment 36
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
I yearn for―I burn for―the one I miss!

2.
While you learn,
I burn.

3.
While you try to discern your will,
I burn still.



Sappho, fragment 30
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Virgins, keeping vigil all night long,
go, make a lovely song,
sing of the love you abide
for the violet-robed bride.

Or better yet―arise, regale!
Go entice the eligible bachelors
so that we shocked elders
can sleep less than the love-plagued nightingales!



Sappho, fragment 122
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1a.
A willowy girl plucking wildflowers.

1b.
A willowy girl picking wildflowers.

2.
A tender maiden plucking flowers
persuades the knave
to heroically brave
the world's untender hours.



Sappho, fragment 125
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Love, bittersweet Dispenser of pain,
Weaver of implausible fictions:
     flourishes in prosperity,
     weeps for life's perversity,
     quails before adversity,
dies haggard, believing she's pretty.



Sappho, fragment 201
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Death is evil;
so the Gods decreed
or they would die.

2.
Death is evil; the Gods all agree.
For, had death been good,
the Gods would
be mortal, like me.



Sappho, fragment 43
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Come, dear ones,
let us cease our singing:
morning dawns.



Sappho, fragment 14
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Today
may
buffeting winds bear
all my distress and care
away.

2.
Today
may
buffeting winds bear
away
all my distress and care.



Sappho, fragment 69
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
I gladly returned
to soft arms I once spurned.

2.
Into the soft arms of the girl I once spurned,
I gladly returned.



Sappho, fragment 29
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Since my paps are dry and my barren womb rests,
let me praise lively girls with violet-scented *******.



Sappho, fragment 1
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Beautiful swift sparrows
rising on whirring wings
flee the dark earth for the sun-bright air …



Sappho, fragment 10
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Girls ripening for marriage wove flowers into garlands.

2.
Girls of the ripening maidenhead wove garlands.

3.
Girls of the ripening maidenhead wore garlands.



Sappho, fragment 94 & 98
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Listen, my dear;
by the Goddess I swear
that I, too,
(like you)
had to renounce my false frigidity
and surrender my virginity.
My wedding night was not so bad;
you too have nothing to fear, so be glad!
(But then why do I sometimes still think with dread
of my lost maidenhead?)



Sappho, fragment 114
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Maidenhead! Maidenhead!
So swiftly departed!
Why have you left me
forever brokenhearted?



Sappho, fragment 2
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch, after Sappho and Tennyson

I sip the cup of costly death;
I lose my color, catch my breath
whenever I contemplate your presence,
or absence.



Sappho, fragment 32
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
The Muses honored me by gifting me works.

2.
The Muses gave me their gifts and made me famous.

3.
They have been very generous with me,
the violet-strewing Muses of Olympus;
thanks to their gifts
I have become famous.



Sappho, fragment 3
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Stars ringing the lovely moon
pale to insignificance
when she illuminates the earth
with her magnificence.



Sappho, fragment 49
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You have returned!
You did well to not depart
because I pined for you.
Now you have re-lit the torch
I bear for you in my heart,
this flare of Love.
I bless you and bless you and bless you
because we're no longer apart.



Sappho, fragment 52
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Yesterday,
you came to my house
to sing for me.

Today,
I come to you
to return the favor.

Talk to me. Do.
Sweet talk,
I love the flavor!

Please send away your maids
and let us share a private heaven-
haven.



Sappho, fragment 94
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

There was no dance,
no sacred dalliance,
from which we were absent.



Sappho, fragment 152
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

… shot through
with innumerable hues …



Sappho, fragment 46
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You came and did well to come
because I desired you. You made
love blaze in my breast, thus I bless you …
but not the endless hours when you're gone.



Sappho, fragment 153
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

They call me the sweet-voiced girl, parthenon aduphonon.



Sappho, fragment 94
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You anointed yourself
with the most exquisite perfume.



Sappho, fragment 42
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
As their hearts froze,
their feathers molted.

2.
As their hearts grew chill
their wings grew still.

3.
Their hearts quieted,
they alighted.



Sappho, fragment 134
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Selene came to Endymion in the cave,
made love to him as he slept,
then crept away before the sun could prove
its light and warmth the more adept.



Sappho, fragment 47
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Eros harrows my heart:
wild winds whipping desolate mountains,
uprooting oaks.



Sappho, fragment 36
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Vain woman, foolish thing!
Do you base your worth on a ring?



Sappho, fragment 52
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

With my two small arms, how can I
think to encircle the sky?



Sappho, fragment 137
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Gold does not rust,
yet my son becomes dust?



Sappho, fragment 48
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You did well to come and I yearned for you.
Though I burned with desire, you cooled my fevered mind.



Mere air,
my words' fare,
but intoxicating to hear.
—loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Sappho, fragment 9
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Mere breath,
words I command
are nevertheless immortal.



Sappho, fragment 118
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Sing, my sacred tortoiseshell lyre;
come, let my words
accompany your voice.



My Religion
attributed to Sappho
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1a.
I discovered the Goddess in your body's curves and crevasses.

1b.
I found the Goddess in your body's curves and crevasses.

1c.
I sought the Goddess in your body's curves and crevasses.

2a.
My religion consists of your body's curves and crevasses.

2b.
My religion became your body's curves and crevasses.

2c.
I discovered my religion in your body's curves and crevasses.



Sappho, fragment 37
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Pain
drains
me
to
the
last
drop
.

2.
Pain drains me;
may thunderstorms and lightning
strike my condemners.



Sappho, fragment 147
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Someone, somewhere
will remember us,
I swear!



Sappho, fragment 146
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1a.
No droning bee,
nor even the bearer of honey
for me!

1b.
No buzzing bee,
nor even the bearer of honey
for me!

2.
Neither the honey
nor the bee
for me!



Sappho, fragment 168b
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1a.
Midnight.
The hours drone on
as I moan here, alone.

1b.
Midnight.
The hours drone.
I moan,
alone.

2a.
The moon has long since set;
the Pleiades are gone;
now half the night is spent
yet here I lie—alone.

2b.
The moon has long since set;
the Pleiades are gone;
now half the night is spent
yet here I sleep, alone.



Sappho, fragment 119
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
We brought the urn aboard the barge, inscribed:
This is the dust of Timas,
whom Persephone received, *****, into her bedchamber,
for whom her fellowmaidens in mourning
slashed their soft curls with sharpened blades.

2.
This is the dust of Timas, dead, *****,
whom Persephone took to her dark bed,
for whom her fellowmaidens, mourning,
hacked off their locks like sheep at a shearing.



Sappho, fragment 21
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A purple scarf shadowed your face—
a cherished gift from Timas,
sent from Phocaea.



Sappho, fragment 290
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Dancing rhythmically, with light feet,
the Cretan women thronged the altar,
trampling circles in the fine soft flowering grass.

2.
Dancing rhythmically, with light feet,
to the pulsating beat,
Cretan
women thronged the altar in their mass,
trampling circles in the fine soft flowering grass.



Sappho, fragment 128
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Come join us, tender Graces
and lovely-haired Muses,
in our ecstatic dances!



Sappho, fragment 93
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Our playmates are pink-ankled Graces
and golden Aphrodite!



Sappho, fragment 53
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Come, rosy-armed Graces,
Zeus's daughters,
in your perfection!



Sappho, fragment 111
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Raise the rafters, carpenters.
Hoist high the roof-beams!

***** Hymenaeus!

Here comes the bridegroom,
statuesque as Ares!

***** Hymenaeus!



Sappho, fragment 112
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Lucky bridegroom,
your wedding day has finally arrived
and your alluring bride is your heart’s desire!



Sappho, fragment 32 (Barnard 32)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Virginity!
Alas my lost Virginity!



Sappho, fragment 57
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Heavy-lidded Slumber, child of Night, claimed them.



Sappho, fragment 57a
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Aphrodite's handmaid, resplendent in gold,
Hecate, Queen of Darkness untold!



Sappho, fragment 63
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Last night, Cyprian,
you and I clashed (s)words
in my dreams.



Sappho, fragment 48
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Now I know why Eros,
of all the gods’ offspring,
is most blessed.



Sappho, fragment 68
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

That was then, this is now!
In those days my maidenhead was in full bloom,
then you …



Sappho, fragment 135
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Golden Persuasion, Aphrodite's daughter,
how you deceive mortals!



Sappho, fragment 88
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Why, Procne,
delicate swallow, daughter of Pandīon,
why do you weary me with tales of woe?



Sappho, fragment 287
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I once instructed Hero of Gyara, the fleetfooted.



Sappho, fragment 15
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Cypris, may she find you a harsh mistress,
Doricha, the ****!
Put an end to her bragging,
nor let her boast that she fooled him twice,
my brother's embezzler!

Doricha was a courtesan who allegedly caused Sappho's brother Charaxus to lose considerable wealth. Doricha was also known by the pseudonym Rhodopis, which means "rosy-cheeked."



Sappho, fragment 7
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Doricha commands arrogantly,
like young men.



Sappho, fragment 148
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A vagabond friendship,
a public blessing …
repent Rhodopis!



Sappho, fragment 138
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The beautiful courtesan Rhodopis,
lies here entombed, more fair
than when she walked with white lilies
plaited in her dark hair,
but now she's as withered as they:
whose dust is more gray?



Sappho, fragment 5
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Revered Nereids, divine sea-daughters, please grant that my brother may return unharmed,
his heart's desires all fulfilled,
and may he show his sister more honor than in his indifferent past …
But you, O august Kypris, please keep him from unbearable dooms!



Sappho, fragment 148
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Wealth unaccompanied by Character
is a dangerous houseguest,
but together they invite happiness.



Sappho, fragment 201
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Gold is indestructible.

2.
Gold is God's indestructible Child:
the One neither moth nor worm devours.



Sappho, fragment 66
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Ares bragged he'd drag forge-master Hephaestus off by sheer force!



Sappho, fragment 120
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Over fisherman Pelagon's grave his father Meniscus left creel and oar, relics of a luckless life.



Sappho, fragment 143
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

How golden broom brightens riverbanks!



Sappho, fragment 94
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You remind me of a little girl
I once assisted picking flowers.



Sappho, fragment 95
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Lord Hermes, you guide spirits to their final destination.
Now guide me, for I am despondent and wish only to die,
to see the lotus-lined shores of Acheron.



Sappho, fragment 150
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1
Cleis, daughter, don't cry!
Mourning is unbecoming a poet's household.

2.
For those who serve the Muses,
mourning is unbecoming.



Sappho, fragment 56
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Will any woman
born under the sun
ever match your art?

2.
No woman
born under the sun
will ever have your wisdom.



Sappho, fragment 135
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Erinna, why does darkwinged Procne, King Pandion's daughter, beckon?



Sappho, fragment 17
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Hear me, Queen Hera, as your delightful festival nears,
you to whom the sons of Atreus performed vows,
those dazzling kings who did such amazing things,
first at Troy, then later at sea.
And yet, sailing the sea-road to our island,
those mighty kings still could not attain it
until they had called on you and Zeus,
the god of seekers and beseechers,
and Dionysus, alluring son of Semele.
Now we too perform the ancient rites,
O most holy and most beautiful Goddess,
we throngs of virgins, young women and wives.
Please allow us to arrive safely at the shrine.



Sappho, fragment 86
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

In this quiet moment,
I beg a boon from Zeus,
the bearer of the aegis,
even as I implore, O Aphrodite,
the tenderness of your benevolent heart;
hear my prayer, as once before,
when, departing Cyprus,
you heeded my earnest cry
and chose not to be harsh.



Sappho, fragment 44a
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Golden-haired Phoebus was sired on Leto by the high-soaring son of Kronos. His sister, Artemis, swore a great oath to Zeus: “By your crown, I shall always be an ***** ****** hunting on remote mountaintops. Assent!” The father of the Blessed Ones nodded his consent. Now gods and mortals call her The ****** Huntress and Eros, limb-loosener, dare never approach her!



Sappho, fragment 168c
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Gaia, rainbow-crowned, garbs herself in myriad hues.



Sappho, fragment 101a
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Undaunted by summer ablaze
the cicada emits its high, shrill song.



Sappho, fragment 103
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Sing of the bride with shapely feet, fair as the violet-robed daughter of Zeus, Artemis. Let the violet-robed bride calm her bridegroom's anger. Come holy Graces and Pierian Muses, whose sweet-toned songs soothe the overwrought heart. Let the annoyed bridegroom complain to his companions as she redoes her hair, fiddles with her lyre, and tries on dawn-golden sandals!



Sappho, fragment 103b
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Bed the bride with the beautiful feet,
or bring her to me!



Sappho, fragment 141
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Hermes mixed ambrosia in a bowl,
then poured it for the gods
who, having lifted their cups, made libations,
then in one voice blessed the bridegroom.



Sappho, fragment 27
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Because you were once young and loved to dance and sing, come, think favorably of us and be gracious. You know we're off to a wedding, so quickly as possible please send the virgins away. And may the gods bless us here since there's no path yet for men to reach great Olympus.



Sappho, fragment 115
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Dear groom,
to whom
may I compare you?
To a slender sapling.



Sappho, fragment 103c
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
… remembering delightful Arheanassa,
her laughter lovely as any Lorelei's …

2.
… remembering delightful Arheanassa,
her laughter lovely as any water nymph's …



Sappho, fragment 76
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Fulfill?
At my age I'm just hanging on!



Sappho, fragment 45
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
As long as you desire, I do!

2.
As long as you command, I obey!

3.
As long as you will, I submit.

4.
As long as you want me, I'm yours.



Sappho, fragment 50
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A handsome man pleases the eyes
but a good man pleases.



Sappho, fragment 41
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

For you, O my Beautiful Ones,
my mind is unalterable.



Sappho, fragment 18
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Everyone extols my storytelling:
"better than any man's!"



Sappho, fragment 88
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Though you prefer not to get carried away
and may imagine someone sweeter to behold,
someone who may yet say "Yes!"
still I will love you as long as there's breath in me,
swallowing the bitter,
ever the faithful lover.



Sappho, fragment 158
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

When anger floods your chest,
best to still a reckless tongue.



Sappho, fragment 129
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

They say Sappho's sweetest utterance
Was the hymeneal hymn of Love.



Sappho, fragment 153
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Queen Dawn,
solemn Dawn,
come!



Sappho, fragment 26
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Why, Mistress Aphrodite,
*******! Why do you
fill me with such lust? Why
inflict such suffering on me?
When I prayed to you in the past,
you  never treated me with such indifference!



Sappho, fragment 132
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Love, the child of Aphrodite and heaven;
Sappho, of earth;
Who had the more divine birth?



In the following 101 short translations the fragment numbers are Lobel-Page unless otherwise noted. All translations are by Michael R. Burch and should be so credited if they are used in any way, shape or form.

I now, with all my heart, fully, as much as it is possible for me, blossom to see your lovely face, touching. (4)

Let's go ogle golden-armed Lady Dawn before our doom. (6b)

It's impossible to be happy and human; yet I still pray a share for myself, of happiness. (16a)

Even this pressed for time, tonight we can raise a toast to the stars. (18a)

Put on your finery and with any luck we'll make harbor — back to dry land, back to the black earth. (20)

Though I'm skilled in lament and trembling with wrinkle-skinned age, yet there is the chase. Strum your lyre and sing to us of violet-robed loveseekers, Abanthis! (21)

Left to our own devices, two pretty young things, we found our way to the bedroom. (25)

Menelaus, son of Atreus, lies returned to the black earth, finally beyond agony. (INCERT. 27)

Colorful Lydian sandals covered her feet. So beautiful! (39)

At your altar, unforgiving Mistress, I will sacrifice a white goat and offer libations. (40)

I and Archeanassa, Gorgo's wife … (42a)

Beauty brings peace when my mind is troubled. Come sit beside me, friends, for day draws nigh. (43)

Once fleeing, hounded and bitten by gods, you gave me a name, put fame in my mouth. (58a)

O darkwinged dream you soar on night's drafts to sleep with the gods, and I am in agony to sense such distant power for I expect to share nothing with the blessed. I would rather not be left with mere trinkets, yet may I have them all! (63)

Andromeda may have abandoned you, but I, Aphrodite, Queen of Cyprus, still love you, Sappho, as the sun illuminates everything, everywhere; even by the dewy banks of Acheron, I am with you. (65)

I come to join the harmonies of a joyful chorus: sweet-toned, clear-voiced. (70)

Aphrodite, goddess of sweet-sung desires, sits on her throne of blooms in the beautiful dew. (73)

Aphrodite, sweet-talking goddess of love, sits on her throne of blooms in the beautiful dew. (73)

Joy? What joy? You gave me nothing: though beautiful, always unsmiling. (77)

She was all hair, otherwise nothing. (80)

Mnasidika is more curvaceous than even our soft Gyrinno. (82a)

Wait here once again, because … I come! (84)

You enrich me, like listening to an old man. (85)

We, having left rumors behind, departed people in a frenzy, tearing out their hair. (87)

Atthis, so charming in the bedroom, but otherwise hateful, proud and aloof, her teeth clicking like castanets. (87a)

Though you caused my soul and my heart sorrow, here's a small truth: I will always say "I love you" with a true heart. (88a)

Persuasion, Aphrodite's fledgling, with her broad, arrogant wings, sped me to Gyrinno, then to graceful Atthis. (90)

Irana, you're the biggest pain I've ever met! (91)

… saffron-dyed Phrygian purple robes and rugs … (92)

Later Polyanaktidis takes the lyre, strums the chords till they vibrate softly, and yet the sound pierces bones and melts the marrow. (99a)

Sons of Zeus, come to your rites from wooded Gryneia, here to our oracle! Then let the ritual songs begin! (99b)

Expensive gifts, these scented purple headscarves Mnasis sent us from Phokaia. (101)

Gorgo took her many insignificant verses to Cyprus, to be admired by many. (103a)

******'s singers reign supreme! (106)

Lesbian singers out-sing all others. (106)

… a most beautiful, graceful girl … (108)

The doorkeep’s feet are seven fathoms long, fill five oxhides, and it took ten cobblers to strap his sandals! (110)

Groom, to whom can I fairly compare you? To a slender sapling. (115)

Rejoice, most honored bride and groom! Rejoice! (116)

May the bride rejoice and her groom rejoice. Rejoice! (117)

The newlyweds appeared at the polished entryway. (117a)

Hesperus, star of the evening! *****, god of marriage! Adonis-like groom! (117b)

She stunned us in / wet linen. (119)

I'm talented, it's true, / but you / Calliope, remain unrivaled. (124)

I now wear garlands, who once wove them. (125)

Come again, Muses, leaving the golden heavens. (126)

Andromeda had a fine retort: "Sappho, why did Aphrodite so favor you? Did you ****** her?" (133)

We once spoke in a dream, Cyprian! (134)

Nightingale, enticing-songed harbinger of spring. Sing! (136)

The gods alone are above tears. (139)

They've all had their fill of Gorgo. (144)

Nightlong celebration wearies their eyes, then closes them. (149)

Our eyes embrace the black sleep of night. (151)

… many colors mingled … (152)

Women thronged the altar at moonrise. (154)

A hearty "Hello!" to the daughter of Polyanax. (155)

Lady Dawn, arise, / flood night's skies / with cerise. (157)

Imperial Aphrodite said: "You and Eros are my vassals. (159)

Imperial Aphrodite! bridegrooms bow down to Her! kings are Her bodyguards and squires. (161)

You "see" me? With whose eyes? (162)

Oh, my dearest darling, never depart/ or you'll wreck my heart! (163)

Leto summons her son, the Sun. (164)

To himself he seems godly, to us a boor. (165)

Leda, they said, once discovered a hidden, hyacinth-blue egg. (166)

Whiter than eggs, your unsunned *******. (167)

She's fonder of children than cradlerobber Gello. (168a)

We ran like fawns from the symposium: me, Cleis and reckless Gongyla. (168d)

Destiny is from the Muses, / and thus I was destined to leave him / to become / Sappho, Mistress of Song. (168e,f)

Unknowing of evil, I was pure innocence. (171)

Eros, pain-inducer, desist! (172)

She grew like a trellis vine. (173)

Mighty Zeus, World-Holder! (180)

Little is learned with an easy passage, much by a hard. (181)

May I go, or must you? (182)

Eros gusting blew my heart to pieces. (183)

I live in danger of too much love. (184)

Men fell in love with my honeyed voice, but I fell for girls. (185)

Sappho: Let me be one of the Muses when I die! Aphrodite: Granted! (187)

Eros, story-weaver, never a happy ending? (188)

I was very wise, except in the ways of love. (190)

That girl grew curvy and curly, like celery. (191)

We raised golden goblets inlaid with ivory and toasted the stars. (192)

I once instructed Hero of Gyara, the fleetfooted runner. (287)

We collapsed, drenched in sweat on both sides. (288)

Dawn spilled down the high mountains. (289)

Trading rosy health for less heartache, I fled my girlish youth. (291)

Such a boy once drove his chariot to Thebes, while Malis spun his fate on her spindle. (292, Malis was a Lydian war goddess)

"Thorneater?" That doesn't offend irongutted Arcadians! (293)

Hecate, Aphrodite's golden-armored ally, Queen of the Underworld. (294)

Learn from Admetus to love the courageous and avoid cowards, who seldom show gratitude. (296)

The black earth absorbed grief-stricken tears along with the interred sons of Atreus. (297)

Nightingale, sing your song and I'll sing along. (298)

Aphrodite, my mind is troubled. I'm still your servant, but Atthis remains a headstrong child. (299)

As when before your light streamed like honey but I was in darkness still. (300)

She is lovely as before, but where now is Hope? (300a)

Aphrodite, do you not love the windlike dances / of beautiful, apple-cheeked Abanthis? (301)

Cyprian, how splendid your altar ablaze in blue, silver and gold. Yet you all the more amazing! (302)

The bride lovely as dawn's unfolding sky, the groom nearly as handsome. (303)

Cyprian, here we come, singing songs and offering libations! (304)

A graceful girl, shy as a fawn and as flighty. (305)

Glorious passions! Passions uproarious! (306)



Sappho, fragment 306a
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

O most revered Queen of Heaven,
Golden Aphrodite!

Blessed above all mortal women,
and blessed by them …

Goddess, come!

Aphrodite, most beautiful,
enter with your train of elegant attendants!

Arise now for me,
honeysweet Aphrodite!

Meet me with greetings holy and divine!

Be mine!

What ecstasies, O my Queen,
shall we revel in at midnight?



THE LONGER POEMS OF SAPPHO

Unfortunately, the only completely intact poem left by Sappho is her "Ode to Aphrodite" or "Hymn to Aphrodite" (an interesting synchronicity since Sappho is best known as a love poet and Aphrodite was the ancient Greek goddess of love). However, "That man is peer of the gods" and the first poem below, variously titled “The Anactoria Poem,” “Helen’s Eidolon” and “Some People Say …” are largely intact. Was Sappho the author of the world's first "make love, not war" poem?



"Some Say"
Sappho, fragment 16
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Warriors on rearing chargers,
columns of infantry,
fleets of warships:
some call these the dark earth's redeeming visions.
But I say—
the one I desire.

Nor am I unique
because she who so vastly surpassed all other mortals in beauty
—Helen—
seduced by Aphrodite, led astray by desire,
departed for distant Troy,
abandoning her celebrated husband,
deserting her parents and child!

Her story reminds me of Anactoria,
who has also departed,
and whose lively dancing and lovely face
I would rather see than all Lydia's horsemen, war-chariots
and columns of infantry parading in flashing armor.



Sappho, fragment 31
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

To the brightness of Love
not destroying the sight—
sweet, warm noonday sun
lightening things dun:
whence comes the Night?



Ode to Anactoria
Sappho, fragment 31
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

How can I compete with that ****** man
who fancies himself one of the gods,
impressing you with his "eloquence" …
when just the thought of basking in your radiant presence,
of hearing your lovely voice and lively laughter,
sets my heart hammering at my breast?

Hell, when I catch just a quick glimpse of you,
I'm left speechless, tongue-tied,
and immediately a blush like a delicate flame reddens my skin.

Then my vision dims with tears,
my ears ring,
I sweat profusely,
and every muscle twitches or trembles.

When the blood finally settles,
I'm paler and wetter than the limpest grass.

Then, in my exhausted madness,
I'm as dull as the dead.

And yet I must risk all, being bereft without you …



Ode to Anactoria
Sappho, fragment 31
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

To me that boy seems
blessed by the gods
because he sits beside you,
basking in your brilliant presence.

My heart races at the sound of your voice!
Your laughter?—bright water, dislodging pebbles
in a chaotic vortex. I can't catch my breath!
My heart bucks in my ribs. I can't breathe. I can't speak.

My ******* glow with intense heat;
desire's blush-inducing fires redden my flesh.
My ears seem hollow; they ring emptily.
My tongue is broken and cleaves to its roof.

I sweat profusely. I shiver.
Suddenly, I grow pale
and feel only a second short of dying.
And yet I must endure, somehow,

despite my poverty.



Sappho, fragment 31
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

… at the sight of you,
words fail me …



Sappho, fragment 31
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Your voice beguiles me.
Your laughter lifts my heart's wings.
If I listen to you, even for a moment, I am left stunned, speechless.



The following are Sappho's poems for Atthis aka Attis aka Athis …



Sappho, fragment 49
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
I loved you, Atthis, long ago …
even when you seemed a graceless child.

2.
I fell in love with you, Atthis, long ago …
You seemed immature to me then, and not all that graceful.

3.
I loved you, little monkey-faced Atthis, long ago …
when you still seemed a graceless child.

4.
I loved you Atthis, long ago,
when my girlhood was a heyday of flowers
and you seemed but an awkward adolescent.



Sappho, fragment 131
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
You desert me, Atthis,
as if you find me distasteful,
flitting off to Andromeda …

2.
Atthis, you forsake me
and flit off to Andromeda …



Ode to Anactoria or Ode to Atthis or Ode to Gongyla
Sappho, fragment 94
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

So my Atthis has not returned
and thus, let the truth be said,
I wish I were dead …

"Honestly, I just want to die!"
Atthis sighed,
shedding heartfelt tears,
inconsolably sad
when she
left me.

"How deeply we have loved,
we two,
Sappho!
Oh,
I really don't want to go!"

I answered her tenderly,
"Go as you must
and be happy,
trust-
ing your remembrance of me,
for you know how much
I loved you.

And if you begin to forget,
please try to recall
all
the heavenly emotions we felt
as with many wreathes of violets,
roses and crocuses
you sat beside me
adorning your delicate neck.

Once garlands had been fashioned of many woven flowers,
with much expensive myrrh
we anointed our bodies, like royalty
on soft couches,
then my tender caresses
fulfilled your desire …"



Sappho, fragment 96
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Our beloved Anactoria dwells in distant Sardis, but her thoughts often return to the life we shared together here, when she saw you as a goddess incarnate, robed in splendor, and loved to hear you singing her praises. Now she surpasses all Sardinian women, as, rising at sunset the rosy-fingered moon outshines the surrounding stars, illuminating salt seas and flowering meadows alike. Thus the delicate dew sparkles, the rose revives, and the tender chervil and sweetclover blossom. Now oftentimes when our beloved wanders aimlessly, she is reminded of gentle Atthis; then her heart assaults her tender breast with painful pangs and she cries aloud for us to console her. Truly, we understand the distress she feels, because Night, the many-eared, calls to us from across the dividing sea. But to go there is not easy, nor to rival a goddess in her loveliness.



The following translation is based on an imaginative translation by Willis Barnstone. The source fragment has major gaps.

Sappho, fragment 96
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

How can mortal women rival the goddesses in beauty? But you may have come closest of all, or second to only Helen! With much love for you Aphrodite poured nectar from a gold decanter and with gentle hands Persuasion bade you drink. Now at the Geraistos shrine, of all the women dear to me, none compares to you.



Sappho, fragment 92
translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

“Sappho, if you don’t leave your room,
I swear I’ll never love you again!
Get out of bed, rise and shine on us,
take off your Chian nightdress,
then, like a lily floating in a pond,
enter your bath. Cleis will bring you
a violet frock and lovely saffron blouse
from your clothes-chest. Then we’ll adorn
you with a bright purple mantle and crown
your hair with flowers. So come, darling,
with your maddening beauty,
while Praxinoa roasts nuts for our breakfast.
The gods have been good to us,
for today we’re heading at last to Mytilene
with you, Sappho, the loveliest of women,
like a mother among daughters.” Dearest
Atthis, those were fine words,
but now you forget everything!



Sappho, fragment 98
translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
My mother said that in her youth
a purple ribband
was considered an excellent adornment,
but we were dark
and for blondes with hair brighter than torches
it was better to braid garlands of fresh flowers.

2.
My mother said that in her youth
to bind one's hair in back,
gathered together by a purple plaited circlet,
was considered an excellent adornment,
but for blondes with hair brighter than torches
it was better to braid garlands of fresh flowers,
or more recently, to buy colorful headbands from Sardis
and other Ionian cities.
But for you, my dearest Cleis,
I have no iridescent headband
to match your hair's vitality!



Sappho, fragment 41
translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

For you, fair maidens, my mind does not equivocate.



Hymn to Aphrodite
by Sappho
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Immortal Aphrodite, throned in splendor!
Wile-weaving daughter of Zeus, enchantress and beguiler!
I implore you, dread mistress, discipline me no longer
with such vigor!

But come to me once again in kindness,
heeding my prayers, as you did so graciously before;
O, come Divine One, descend once more
from heaven's golden dominions!

Then, with your chariot yoked to love's
white consecrated doves,
their multitudinous pinions aflutter,
you came gliding from heaven's shining heights,
to this dark gutter.

Swiftly they came and vanished, leaving you,
O my Goddess, smiling, your face eternally beautiful,
asking me what unfathomable longing compelled me
to cry out.

Asking me what I sought in my bewildered desire.
Asking, "Who has harmed you, why are you so alarmed,
my poor Sappho? Whom should Persuasion
summon here?"

"Although today she flees love, soon she will pursue you;
spurning love's gifts, soon she shall give them;
tomorrow she will woo you,
however unwillingly!"

Come to me now, O most Holy Aphrodite!
Free me now from my heavy heartache and anguish!
Graciously grant me all I request!
Be once again my ally and protector!

"Hymn to Aphrodite" is the only poem by Sappho of ****** to survive in its entirety.



Sappho, fragment 2
translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Come, Cypris, from Crete
to meet me at this holy temple
where a lovely grove of apples awaits our presence
bowering altars
                            fuming with frankincense.

Here brisk waters babble beneath apple branches,
the grounds are overshadowed by roses,
and through their trembling leaves
                                                              deep sleep descends.

Here the horses will nibble flowers
as we gorge on apples
and the breezes blow
                                       honey-sweet with nectar…

Here, Cypris, we will gather up garlands,
pour the nectar gratefully into golden cups
and with gladness
                                 commence our festivities.



The Brothers Poem
by Sappho
translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

… but you’re always prattling about Kharaxos
returning with his ship's hold full. As for that,
Zeus and the gods alone know, so why indulge
idle fantasies?

Rather release me, since I am commending
numerous prayers to mighty Queen Hera,
asking that his undamaged ship might safely return
Kharaxos to us.

Then we will have serenity. As for
everything else, leave it to the gods
because calm seas often follow
sudden squalls

and those whose fortunes the gods transform
from unmitigated disaster into joy
have received a greater blessing
than prosperity.

Furthermore, if Larikhos raises his head
from this massive depression, we shall
see him become a man, lift ours and
stand together.



Sappho, fragment 58
translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Virgins, be zealous for the violet-scented Muses' lovely gifts
and those of melodious lyre …
but my once-supple skin sags now;
my arthritic bones creak;
my ravenblack hair's turned white;
my lighthearted heart's grown heavy;
my knees buckle;
my feet, once fleet as fawns, fail the dance.

I often bemoan my fate … but what's the use?
Not to grow old is, of course, not an option.

I am reminded of Tithonus, adored by Dawn with her arms full of roses,
who, overwhelmed by love, carried him off beyond death's dark dominion.
Handsome for a day, but soon withered with age,
he became an object of pity to his ageless wife.

And yet I still love life's finer things and have been granted brilliance, abundance and beauty.



And now, in closing, these are poems dedicated to the Divine Sappho:



Sappho's Rose
translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The rose is—
the ornament of the earth,
the glory of nature,
the archetype of the flowers,
the blush of the meadows,
a lightning flash of beauty.



Sappho’s Lullaby
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

Hushed yet melodic, the hills and the valleys
sleep unaware of the nightingale's call
as the dew-laden lilies lie
listening,
glistening …
this is their night, the first night of fall.

Son, tonight, a woman awaits you;
she is more vibrant, more lovely than spring.
She'll meet you in moonlight,
soft and warm,
all alone …
then you'll know why the nightingale sings.

Just yesterday the stars were afire;
then how desire flashed through my veins!
But now I am older;
night has come,
I’m alone …
for you I will sing as the nightingale sings.

Keywords/Tags: Sappho, ******, Greek, translation, epigram, epigrams, love, ***, desire, passion, lust

i. "Why did the number of parking tickets spike
when Persephone was carried off to the underworld?
Demeter wasn't working."
She liked greek mythology puns.
It was a good thing I was creative.

ii. Truth or Dare, I asked her what
was the best decision she's ever made.
she answered with, "In 7th grade I named my puppy Achilles,
so when I saw him I could say, 'Achilles, heel!'"

iii. It took me two weeks to realise that
when we held hands, I wasn't really
holding her hand, but a chainsaw,
ready to slash through anything that stood in our way like
Hercules chopping off the Hydra's head.
I was immortal.

iv. August eleventh; 9 PM
we watched for the meteor shower.
I connected the freckles splayed upon her knee,
told her they looked like the constellation of Cassiopeia.
"Be Sirius" she jested.

v. She had a bad habit
of smoking at the beach and I
Wondered if she knew that with
every single flick of ash into the water,
Poseidon was cursing her to the River Styx.

vi. Headaches visited her often, I joked that
maybe she was getting ready to birth
a Goddess from her cranium. She
did not find it clever.

vii. You could say we became like Aphrodite and
Hephaestus. I, longing for her. She,
lusting after another. A synonym for her
headaches would be me.

viii. Apparently if you hack off a Hydra head, two
would grow to replace it. Knowing this sooner
probably would have saved me from numerous
amounts of Kleenex and chocolate.

ix. She left me a note on the dresser,
"Fun fact: Medusa's favourite cheese was
Gorgon-zola. PS - you remind me
of Medusa, please remember to brush your hair."
She reminds of Medusa as well, I do not doubt that if we
meet again, her eyes would still turn me into
stone.

As the chisel strikes the marble, so the psyche shapes the man.
Perfect in his alabaster, carving self from his own hands.
And once honed, his craft can grow by drafting bodies made of stone
Sourced from quarries free of worry, something he can call his own.

If he wishes to ascend beyond his animal desires,
He must grow a patience cold enough to ***** the raging fires
Burning hot against his skin and so within his weary soul,
For his enemy resides in him, and stokes the glowing coals.