Like the hyacinth in the hills which the shepherd steps on, trampling into the soil the flower in its purple— Like the sweetest apple ripening on the top-most branch, unpicked, it falls, bruises, and rots and no one notices— Like my love for you now, like memories of you later after I too am gone. They will ask, "Who is this woman to whom he wrote these poems?" But as in Shakespeare's sonnets, the woman who played the muse will be forgotten with time. (The immortality of words is cheap, anyway. But still, it eases the loss to say this—Sappho's tourniquet.)
Friday, 19-Jan-01 14:20:57 EST