Sappho, Sappho’s pitiless murderess,

Strides in judgment through the end of night

To circumvent the round blue trap of day

(That soon will lock its jail of miseries),

Drives her victim to the penal rock,

Angry, abrupt, broken-off edge of time.

Pursuer and pursued

Tied each to each by such a sullen knot

No arrowy thought of immaterial god

Can slip between and ease the torment crying:

“All my life cries out against all my life,

My love against all my love. I’ll carry Phaon

Until I drop or leap the final crag

Where all is left behind, things and their names.

For if a single name should follow there

I must reiterate this death and leap

Precipice after precipice of death

Till name of wood and hill and might and day

And all that summons Phaon is stripped off.”

Now the dumb hulks of being rise around her:

Beast, rock and tree, legible figures, stare

At her in destitution as on the day

Before the first day broke, when all was nameless,

Nameless earth, water, firmament, and nameless

Woman and man. Till gn the utmost edge

She leans above the unanswering shapes of life,

Cries once and leaps, and battered on the stones,

Batters love, Phaon and all the misery out.