Theodore Stephanides
The Tenth Muse
Such was the reverance and awe inspired
by Sappho's verse in ancient Grecian times,
that Plato even could declare: "Some say
there are Nine Muses — let them think again,
for Lesbian Sappho should be hailed the Tenth!"

Such was her bygone fame. Yet in our day
nothing remains of Sappho's poetry
except a mere six hundred lines or so;
some matchless in their beauty, some too tattered,
fragmented, garbled, patched, to be of worth.
Among the former is that yearning plaint:
The moon has set, the Pleiades are sinking
out of the sky. The hour is late. The night
is almost past... yet I lie, alone.
Or else that happier picture of a garden:
There is the song of water all around
through channel troughs of apple-wood; and sleep
drifts on me from the cool, rustling leaves.
But, with these lines, others have been preserved
to reach us, out of context, from the past;
lines such as: Gorgo... I am sick of her!

How sad it would have been if, by some jest
of ribald, mocking Fate, that single line
had been the only one to bridge the years
of all the songs of Sappho, the Tenth Muse!

But here Fate grins and chuckles: Man is mad,
his passion for destruction limitless.
Perhaps in twenty-six more centyries,
that line alone is all that will survive!"

(from "Sweet-voiced Sappho. Poems of Sappho and other Ancient Greek Authors", 2015)