Sappho of Lesbos, ‘That fellow...’

by Aaron Poochigian

That fellow strikes me as a god’s double,
Couched with you face to face, delighting
In your warm manner, your amiable
Talk and inviting

Laughter—the revelation flutters
My ventricles, my sternum and stomach.
The least glimpse, and my lost voice stutters,
Refuses to come back

Because my tongue is shattered. Gauzy
Flame runs radiating under
My skin; all that I see is hazy,
My ears all thunder.

Sweat comes quickly, and a shiver
Vibrates my frame. I am more sallow
Than grass and suffer such a fever
As death should follow.

But I must suffer further, worthless
As I am ...

Stung with Love is available for purchase at the Penguin Books website: http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780140455571,00.html

10
November, 2010

Aaron Poochigian attended Moorhead State University in Minnesota where he studied under the poets Dave Mason, Alan Sullivan and Tim Murphy. He earned a PhD in Classics in 2006. His original poems have appeared in such journals as Arion, Dark Horse and Poetry Magazine.

Sappho was born after 630 BCE and died around 570 BCE. A native of Lesbos, she is best known for amatory poems focusing on adolescent females, though her range extended well beyond this. Little of her poetry survived the Middle Ages, and much of it is fragmentary.

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Stung With Love: Poems And Fragments Of Sappho translated with an Introduction and Notes by Aaron Poochighian and with a Preface by Carol Ann Duffy (Penguin Classics 2009). Selection, translation and editorial material copyright © Aaron Poochigian, 2009. Preface copyright © Carol Ann Duffy, 2009. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.