Lesbian Love Poems
GILLIAN SPRAGGS, EDITOR
love shook my senses
‘He seems to me the peer of gods’
He seems to me the peer of gods, that man
who sits and faces you,
close by you hearing
your sweet voice speaking,
and your sexy laugh, which just this moment makes
the heart quake in my breast: for every time
I briefly glance towards you, then I lose
all power of further speech.
My tongue is smashed; at once a film of fire
runs underneath my skin; no image shapes
before my eyes;
my ears are whining like a whirling top;
cold sweat pours down me, and in every part
shuddering grips me;
I am paler than summer grass,
and seem to myself to need little to make me die.
Sappho
translation © Gillian Spraggs
Sappho
lived on the Greek island of Lesbos in the late seventh and early sixth centuries BCE.
Much of her work is lost, and most of what remains is fragmentary. An aristocrat
by birth, she wrote a number of poems intended for performance at weddings, as
well as lyrics of an apparently personal nature, dealing with erotic friendships
between women. It is clear from her surviving work that she had a personal
devotion to the goddess Aphrodite, as well as to the Muses, the goddesses of
poetry and music.
More poems
Love Shook My Senses: Lesbian Love Poems
edited by Gillian Spraggs
The Women’s Press, London
ISBN 0 7043 4581 1
softcover, xvii + 167 pages
edited by Gillian Spraggs
The Women’s Press, London
ISBN 0 7043 4581 1
softcover, xvii + 167 pages
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