Sappho Wrote about Twelve Thousand Lines of Poetry
Twelve thousands lines of poetry were torched
By time and Christians. Piety increased
The ravages, all this because she scorched
With love for girls. The bishops made a feast
Of male disgust that Sappho caused by fire
In veins for younger women. Holy men
Destroyed her verses making them a pyre
Of beauty and destruction, one. Her pen
Outdid their sanctimony. No one knows
Who all those Christians were. They disappeared
In something less than dust. Their sacred prose
Has been erased, clean as a shaved-off beard.
The few, those flaming stanzas that survive,
Have kept her and her singing love alive.