Sappho Ballad

Paul Verlaine

My gentle hand, a lover's hand, a mistress's, glides and smiles its way across the festival of your skin. Such pleasure in your pleasure. You know my hand was meant to serve you. You know I must unclothe your splendour to send it with a new art's skilful strokes into rapture, then more rapture. I am like great Sappho.

Let my wild head wander and burrow where it will, in search of shadow and smell and the charmed work to be done among the flavours of your secret glory. Let the soul of your poet roam where it will, fields woods hills as you wish and I so much want. I am like great Sappho.

The hungrily I press my athlete's body against the lenght of yours. Hard and soft again, happily
it knows victory and defeat In the battle fought by heart and head. In the sterile embrace where human will completes Nature, I am like great Sappho.