09 January 2008

For Lisa

When you are gone there will be no memory
Of you and no regret.
For you do not share the Pierian roses,
but unseen in the house of Hades
you will stray,
breathed out,
among the ghostly dead.

The Muses have filled my life
with delight. And when I die,
I shall not be forgotten.
- Sappho
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1 comment:

John Davis said...

This is a fascinatingly complex statement with regard to point of view.

The poster evokes Sappho, a lesbian poet, to send a message of hatred towards a Bi-gendered individual. In other words, mob violence against an individual is rationalized because it the poster somehow knows a poem by Sappho!

I know I will feel much safer that one of my attackers can quote Sappho. Unfortunately, it is not the poster, very likely, who will be the one empowered to use brutality. She or He is simply the one who is irresponsibly inciting and empowering the mob towards violence that she/ or he will conveniently slip into the background to watch.

Emily Dickinson wrote: "she did not deem she hurt/ That is not steel's affair?/ A vulgar grimace in the flesh/ How ill the creatures bear".

I doubt when the violence goes down, the regal persona who is versed in Latin and German will be the one with her or his bare hands around somebody's innocent throat. But, whoever it is needs to get a hobby that does not include fomenting hatred for anyone.

JD

11 January, 2008 07:29

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