Seance from Vellum
“When we listen to the verse phrases and whole poems that have made that hard journey through time, space and language, … we are enthralled as much by what we cannot know as by what we hear.” ~ Michael Schmidt, The First Poets
We read them only in translation, most
Of us. Their language is so lost that we
Can barely hear them. Each, a tattered ghost,
Depends upon some serendipity
Of circumstance inside our hearts and brains
To render meaning in our souls. Splinters
Of Sappho whisper hoarsely. Sappho’s veins
Have dripped blue blood drops from Lesbos winters
On papyri and parchment, vellum sheets,
And torn by time the fragments, stingy, wield
Some scraps and would be strains of music. Beats
Of ancient rhythm are broken. They yield
Us crippled hints. In reverence we decode
Them, priestess-like, in clairvoyant mode.