Poem 3

I yearn to give
To rid you of all yet of the glorious
Taste only the sweet nectar of the beautiful and good, you
forget the wrath of pain and embrace me
Let go of blame
Allow your heart to be tenderly swollen
mirthful as you take your fill. For you begin to oblige my thinking

but it is not thus
no mercy or comfort is arranged
you cannot beam so effortlessly nor
may your dreams dance all night long in the solemn darkness where I am aware
blatant execution of evildoing
piercing my pure visions
let us restore each other
shield the minds
of the blessed ones
from corruption
from pollution

Creating a diagram helped me to divert a purpose to each line of the poem. It also helps bring together the ideas in the poem. I used a diagram for poem 16, which helped me figure out that the first stanza is alluding to the strength and variance of preference. I worked around the fragmented break offs, to connect the second and third stanzas to the central idea. A woman leaves everything behind, something leads her astray, and she wants to seek something. Possibly she chooses to leave her children and husband to seek out another woman, since Sappho’s lover Anaktoria is mentioned in the final lines. However it is not clear whether it worked out well, as the last line says that Anaktoria is now gone.