Sappho, by James Wright

But I have turned away, and drawn myself

Upright to walk along the room alone.

Across the dark the spines of cactus plants

Remind me how I go—aloof, obscure,

Indifferent to the words the children chalk

Against my house and down the garden walls.

They cannot tear the garden out of me,

Nor smear my love with names. Love is a cliff,

A clear, cold curve of stone, mottled by stars,

smirched by the morning, carved by the dark sea

Till stars and dawn and waves can slash no more,

Till the rock’s heart is found and shaped again.

I keep the house and say no words, the evening

Falls like a petal down the shawl of trees.

I light the fire and see the blossom dance

On air alone; I will not douse that flame,

That searing flower; I will burn in it.

I will not banish love to empty rain.

For I know that I am asked to hate myself

For their sweet sake

Who sow the world with child.

I am given to burn on the dark fire they make

With their sly voices.

But I have burned already down to bone.

There is a fire that burns beyond the names

Of sludge and filth of which this world is made.

Agony sears the dark flesh of the body,

And lifts me higher than the smoke, to rise

Above the earth, above the sacrifice;

Until my soul flares outward like a blue

Blossom of gas fire dancing in mid-air:

Free of the body’s work of twisted iron.

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