NPM: Timas

April is National Poetry Month. I intend to celebrate it by posting a poem every day. This one is by Sappho, called The Tenth Muse, and translated by Mary Barnard.

Timas

We put the urn aboard ship
with this inscription

This is the dust of little
Timas who unmarried was led
into Persephone's dark bedroom

and she being far from home, girls
her age took new-edged blades
to cut, in mourning for her,
these curls of their soft hair

Cyprian, in my dream

the folds of a purple
kerchief shadowed
your cheeks--the one

Timas one time sent,
a timid gift, all
the way from Phocaea